Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, November 25, 2013, 14:12 (4015 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You are juggling with two meanings of the word "information". The information we acquire through experience is what I meant when I referred to a mindless universe packed with information, which only an intelligent mind can perceive. When I pointed this out, you said you meant "the plan by which life operates", i.e. DNA. Human intelligence also operates through such inborn "information". 
DAVID: I know this. CIA intelligence is information received by spying. This is not the information I am describing. You have not answered the issue. There is information in DNA that runs the plan of life. I am not discussing received information.-Nor am I. Since when was CIA intelligence "inborn"? I referred precisely to what you are referring to. Human intelligence also operates through what you call "the information in DNA that runs the plan of life". You have left out the rest of my response: "Just like us, cells process the information they absorb from the world around them, but the "information" that constitutes the mechanism whereby they do the processing, communicate with one another, take their decisions etc. is, just like ours, of unknown origin." In other words, we do not know the source of our (faculty of) intelligence or theirs, but that does not mean we or they are not intelligent!-You called on Michael Behe to support your claim that God planted billions of programmes into the first cells, to be passed through billions of generations to cover billions of innovations, strategies, lifestyles, strategies.-DAVID: I admit he does not explicitly say that, but his doctrine of irreducible complexity implies it. He is stating that organs can only be made by planning. By the way he is Catholic.-I could just as well argue that "irreducible complexity" implies that the intelligent cell is so complex that it must have been designed. From what I've read, Behe gives individual examples, but nothing remotely resembling your colossal generalization. The Catholic view of evolution is that God guided the whole process, but humans and their souls were the subject of special creation. No mention there either of those umpteen billion programmes. You said earlier that your preprogramming theory was entirely of your own making. Perhaps you should stick to that.