Living cells communicate (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, October 06, 2012, 17:49 (4433 days ago) @ dhw

I am campaigning again for the idea that the intelligent cell is the mechanism that drives evolution, through adaptation and innovation in response to changes in the environment.-I agree, except I maintain that intelligence cells come from an initial intelligence.
> 
> DAVID: How did the intelligent mechanism arise? Doesn't intelligence mean a mind was at work?
> 
> This is the great theistic cop-out. The answer to your question may well be yes, but you refuse to ask the same question when it comes to the intelligence which you believe created earthly intelligence. Here your answer is always "First Cause", which explains absolutely nothing. If an eternal, universal intelligence can simply be there (first cause), and all things follow on from it, then an eternal, ever-changing, unconscious universe can simply be there (first cause), and all things follow on from that, including the chance combination ... out of an infinity of chance combinations ... that gave rise to intelligent life.-You must assume that Big Bang did not occur to have an eternal universe. Recent math papers I have quoted here indicate that there is no 'before' before the Big Bang and this applies to multiverses also. (Alexander Vilenkin):-http://www.newgeology.us/Alexander%20Vilenkin.pdf - We must admit that nothing can come from nothing, in a strict philosophic sense. Therefore, something is eternal, and that must be energy, because the universe is entirely composed of energy. What your proposal is left with is two-fold: unorganized energy by chance created what we see today or the energy had organization from the beginning and that energy had a direction toward complexity and created what we see today. The odds favor the latter.- 
> 
> Dhw: ...in the light of modern science 150 years later, his basic insight still stands up to scientific scrutiny: namely, that all forms of life evolved from earlier forms through diversification and suitability to existing environments. These new discoveries are on the way to explaining how.
> 
> DAVID: It is very difficult to deny evolution occurred.
> 
> In that case, one should beware of sensational headings like "NEO-DARWINISM JUST DIED"!-I was describing the death of a bastard theory, not evolution itself. And Alfred Rusel Wallace did much more of the observing and reached the more logical conclusion.
> 
> Dhw: The belief that these could somehow be attributed to chance clearly has no more basis in science than the belief that it was all designed by an eternal, universal, unobservable and inexplicable intelligence. -See above. It all still is involved in faith in either of the two proposals I gave above.