Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, January 08, 2017, 13:45 (2657 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Nobody is saying that organisms do not have instincts. We have instincts too. That has nothing to do with intelligence.
DAVID: Isn't intelligence stored somewhere? We know single-celled animals almost molecule by molecule. Where is the storage point?
dhw: I am leaning quite heavily towards intelligence, but I do not reject the possibility of “automaticity”. You, however, insist – despite your 50/50 – that organisms CANNOT be intelligent because they do not have a brain, and that I regard as pure prejudice.
DAVID: The intelligence we see in single-celled organisms is in their reactions to stimuli which chemically appear to be automatic. Where does the decision making take place if it not automatic?

I’m not sure why you use the word “stored”. Memory and information are stored, but nobody knows the source of intelligence in the sense of cognizance, information-processing, decision-making etc. Albrecht-Bühler thinks the control centre of the cell is the centrosome.
Guenter Albrecht-Buehler: Cell Intelligence
www.basic.northwestern.edu/g-buehler/FRAME.HTM
Unless you believe your God personally instructs every single bacterium on how to solve every single problem, where is his 3.8-billion-year computer programme for every solution “stored”? If we know every molecule, why hasn’t it been found?

DAVID: My version of God, based on the complexity in the living beings He created, is that He certainly knew what He was doing.
dhw: If he was experimenting to create a being like himself, he would have known he was experimenting to create a being like himself. So once again, what is your objection?
DAVID: But you stated above: "What is your objection to the theoretical proposal that his goal was to produce a creature resembling himself, but he didn’t know how to do it and spent a few billion years experimenting?" I'm confused by your thinking.

Perhaps I didn’t make the distinction clear. In this hypothesis, your God knows WHAT he is doing (trying to create a being resembling himself), but has to experiment because he doesn’t yet know HOW to do it. The result: lots of complex creatures that still can’t think in the way he wants. So on he goes. Of course this runs contrary to your personal view of a God who knows and is in control of absolutely everything, but this constantly brings you to the great impasse: if he knew how to do it from the start, why did he have to design the different stages of the pre-whale, the monarch’s lifestyle and the weaverbird’s nest? And please don’t tell me they were necessary in order to keep life going till humans could arrive. An experimenting God would at least explain the disappearance of 99% of what you insist he personally created. As of course would the autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism which in your last post you kindly accepted as a possibility.