Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, November 26, 2013, 21:50 (4013 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw:I'm not implying anything ... I'm suggesting quite explicitly, along with Shapiro, Margulis, Albrecht-Buehler, Jacob, Becker, Levine et al that cells are intelligent in their own right, and use physics and chemistry to organize themselves and to take and implement their own decisions.-And I'm sticking to my interpretation that they are following and are controlled by automatic responses from the implanted intelligent information in their genomes.->dhw: Dembski confirms that Shapiro sees cooperation between intelligent cells as a key factor in evolution. Doing their own engineering, reworking existing structures and all Shapiro's other "smart" examples take us far, far away from your theory of preprogrammed automatons.-In your view. The cooperation is all planned. Do Dembski or Shapiro describe the method of cooperation? No.
> 
> dhw:You have so far dismissed the findings of all these different scientists as "metaphors", "poppycock", "kooky", and "wooly liberal". Is it not possible that during their many years of research they have seen something you haven't?-No. I've read most of their material and I still interpret your insistence on making it sould like they are really thinking and planning as overreaching.-
> shw: More authoritative statements, as if the cells' intelligent behaviour could not possibly be the result of them actually being intelligent. What do you mean by "championing their epigenetic abilities"? Shapiro goes through a whole list of bacterial "smarts" to show how "incredibly sophisticated they are at coordinating processes involving millions of individual events" and at "managing the biosphere's geochemical and thermodynamic transformations". He concludes that they are very intelligent, sentient beings ... and I suspect you are the only person in the world who would take that to be a definition of automatons. As you say, though, your theory is entirely of your own making!-The whole ID community interprets this as I do. you are misreading Dembski and Behe.