[0] One discussion about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16079735
Bio is crazy complex. We've been poking the brain for a century now, and we have basically gotten no-where. At least we know that now. Take astrocytes/glia as a tiny example. These are the 'glue' cells in a brain that hold and feed the neurons. Sure, they do that, but a lot of new research is saying that they help modulate the synapse as well, the fundamental thing that makes thinking happen. Maybe. We basically have no idea now. We can't even say how many astrocytes there are in a typical brain. Is it 50%, is it 10%? Each new study overturns the last. It's chaos. What even is a synapse? We have no idea. Multiply this over every tissue in a body. And then that's only humans, let alone turtles and birds and bacteria and viruses etc.
One must always remember that bio was 'designed' by a very drunk, very horny, illiterate schizophrenic over 4.5 billion years with an average design cycle of about 22 minutes (~10E14 total cycles). It makes no sense because it never did.
From the argument from design:
> One looks at a simple computer, and sees evidence of intelligent design.
> One looks at a Sun Sparc 20 and... um... well... Okay, One looks at a DEC Alpha and sees evidence of intelligent design.
And from the counter argument:
> If you think the network implies intelligent design, you haven't seen our network.
> Optogenetics is a biological technique which involves the use of light to control cells in living tissue, typically neurons, that have been genetically modified to express light-sensitive ion channels. It is a neuromodulation method that uses a combination of techniques from optics and genetics to control and monitor the activities of individual neurons in living tissue—even within freely-moving animals—and to precisely measure these manipulation effects in real-time.