Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, September 16, 2021, 18:00 (954 days ago) @ dhw

Function in cells

dhw: You keep repeating this, and I keep repeating my agreement, but nobody knows how speciation works, and so the proposal is that the mechanism which causes minor adaptations (i.e. cellular intelligence) may also have caused the major adaptations and innovations that have resulted in speciation. We now know that certain cells can change their functions. That fits in with the proposal.

DAVID: Your answer is like mine.

dhw: That’s good news. So you agree that cells which can change their functions might cause the major adaptations and innovations that lead to speciation. Thank you.

What I said above is cells modify functions, nothing more. Stop putting words in my mouth.

Opossums

dhw: What do you mean by “selection pressure”? The pressure comes from the urge to survive!

DAVID: Aren't you aware of of specious concepts Darwinists constantly employ as 'selection pressure'? Natural selection becomes magical pressure.

dhw: Don’t you agree with me that the opossum’s feigned death is a strategy for survival, and aren’t you aware that the urge to survive is a key feature of Darwin’s theory of evolution?

Yes.

DAVID: No idea of how any animal using this trick decided upon it.

dhw: I’ve offered you two possibilities. What’s your theory?

DAVID: God's actions

dhw: What sort of actions would these be: a 3.8-billion-year programme for feigning death, or did your God pop in and teach the first death-feigning opossum how to do it?

Either or.

QUOTE: We humans like to think of ourselves as a unique species. However, little by little, all those traits that we have been relying on to ground this uniqueness have been falling, as the science advances and reveals the staggering diversity and complexity of animal minds and behaviour. The concept of death should also be counted among those characteristics to which we can no longer resort to convince us of how very special we are. It is time to rethink human exceptionalism, and the disrespect for the natural world that comes with it._

DAVID: Except for our body form with its athletic abilities and our brain, we are animals in our physiology. Both our body form and our brain are exceptional extensions from past roots. The difference is huge and cannot be diminished by the obvious comparisons that exist.

dhw: I am not trying to diminish the difference. The authors wrote: “We now have solid evidence of culture, morality, rationality, and even rudimentary forms of linguistic communication.” Our body form and our brains can also be traced back to our animal ancestors. In that sense we are NOT exceptional. But the degree to which we have developed our brains, our culture, our morality, our rationality and our language do make us exceptional. Why do so many people only see things in terms of left or right, black or white, right or wrong? This blinkered approach is, of course, what leads to the worst forms of extremism. NB: I know you well enough to be certain that you show respect and even love for your animals, and you are no extremist. I am simply pointing out the dangers of the blinkered approach.

So you agree we are exceptional.