Shedding Light On How Cells Communicate (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 07, 2012, 16:11 (4400 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If we believe that the individual intelligent cells that make up the body ... and have invented every innovation in the history of evolution ... are not conscious of themselves, the atheist analogy might be that the universe and life have arisen out of the actions of intelligent but non-self-conscious energy (= what George calls the laws of Nature). In other words, David's beloved First Cause would then be intelligent but non-self-conscious energy, which gives us design without a designer!-DAVID: Please don't assume you can change my First Cause! It is self-conscious, and conveys information in a teleological way. You have agreed that chance can't create ALL THAT IS. A non-self-conscious First Cause is a rogue mass of energy on the loose. There has to be a sense of organization at the start or the future developments are setting off with total disorganization. The evolution of the universe clearly follows a pattern, one that allows us to exist.-I don't assume anything, and I wouldn't dream of trying to (persuade you) to change your First Cause! I am merely suggesting an equally hypothetical alternative. But your comment that this alternative = "a rogue mass of energy on the loose" is itself an assumption. The whole of my post is geared to the possibility that the eternal energy we are BOTH postulating as First Cause may be intelligent in the way we ascribe intelligence to cells, animals, and (as you point out later) plants, without their being self-conscious. They are all creative, but we do not believe they are consciously so. The hypothesis, then, is that eternal energy is NOT a disorganized rogue mass, and that its nature is to organize itself (= George's natural laws). You even go on to ask: "Isn't the entire universe somewhat conscious because of quantum entanglement?" On another post you write: "Richard Feynman admitted no one understands quantum whatever", so the term is not exactly enlightening, but "somewhat conscious" will do for me as a substitute for "intelligent". And that would explain why, like the intelligent cell I never tire of invoking, it keeps on putting itself in different orders. Only a hypothesis, but at least it has two possible advantages over the atheist and theist hypotheses: 1) it doesn't depend on chance, and 2) we don't need an eternally self-conscious god figure to explain life and the universe.