Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, November 17, 2013, 15:51 (3806 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: The concept of the intelligent cell is not poppycock or kooky, but is simply a matter of how one interprets the scientific facts.-> 
> dhw; We seem to be talking about two different kinds of information. I am talking about the information from the outside world which is processed by the intelligence of the organism. If by "information in DNA" you mean all the factors that allow for reproduction and heredity and for maintenance of cells and cell communities, your question is tantamount to asking what is the origin of life. Do you really expect me to answer that? -Yes, because St. Thomas did it in a very logical way. He logically took that concept of the information the universe and life use back to a source. Information must have a source, or it somehow agglomerated by chance into a library of some sort, available to construct the universe and allow for life.-
> DAVID: Not the errors. Error-prone ants died. Those who survived used the right responses. Just as tautological as survival of the fittest.
> 
> dhw; You have missed the point. If ants are automatons, they can only obey instructions. If they make errors it can only be because they were given the wrong instructions or they had the freedom to make their own decisions. Automatons do not make their own decisions. Therefore the errors must also have been preprogrammed, which even you will surely admit is a bit daft.-Not daft. Again I am trying to balance how much God dabbles against full pre-programming. If some ants from an available list of two or three responses to stimuli make an inappropriate fatal choice, those ants taking those choices disappear from evoluiton and the existing ants have refined survival choices. This is pure Darwinian thinking applied to theistic evolution. If Chuck could do it, why can't I?