bacterial (cellular) intelligence shown to be DNA driven (Animals)

by David Turell , Wednesday, December 13, 2017, 14:16 (2319 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Wednesday, December 13, 2017, 15:09

The article is a red herring. Its concern is to dismiss Darwinian randomness in favour of design - a totally different point to the one we are discussing. It was you who said the immune cells learn by experience and change their DNA accordingly, and I thought you had agreed that they were NOT preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago with every possible solution to every problem. Your next comment appears to confirm this.

DAVID: Only the immune system is known to have this capacity, which is absolutely necessary for life to survive.

dhw: Which capacity? According to you, all cell communities have been preprogrammed, so if you think the immune system is unique, then its "capacity" must be the ability to take its own decisions - an integral element of autonomous intelligence. Of course this is necessary for life to survive. The smooth functioning of many cell communities is necessary for life to survive! But if one cell community is KNOWN to have autonomous intelligence, then others may have it too (you agreed to a 50/50 chance), and so perhaps you will pay more heed now to all the implications of the hypothesis. It does not preclude design or the existence of a designer. It only precludes a scenario in which 3.8 billion years ago your God preprogrammed every innovation, lifestyle, natural wonder and cellular adaptation (other than that of the immune cells!) in the history of life, or alternatively dabbled each one personally.

The immune cells are the only cells in life with their special ability to adapt their functions to respond to invaders with specialized secretions to kill. This is clearly shown in the research. No other cell type has been showen to have this function. This is not a 50/50 chance. For these cells it is 100%. There is no 'perhaps' here. These cells can learn to recognize the invaders proteins and produce counter measure killing chemicals. This is just how vaccinations work. They do this automatically.

An article shows some of the automaticity:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-12-aging-impairs-innate-immune-response.html

Iwasaki and her colleagues investigated the innate, or inborn, immune response to the flu virus. The Yale team collected blood samples from healthy young adults and older adults aged 65 and above. They isolated monocytes, a type of white blood cell, from the samples and stimulated the monocytes with either flu virus or a mimic of the virus.

The immune response in cells from older adults was severely impaired in critical ways, the researchers found. To fight the flu virus, the body needs to activate potent antiviral proteins called interferons. But in older adults, this response is weakened by age-related damage to a molecule, TRAF3, that signals immune cells to make interferon. Without that signal, and another involving antiviral genes, resistance to flu falls short, they noted.

These cells are programmed!