Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, November 28, 2013, 14:31 (4015 days ago) @ David Turell

SHAPIRO: "Contemporary research in many laboratories on cell-cell signaling, symbiosis and pathogenesis show that bacteria utilize sophisticated mechanisms for intercellular communication..." 
DAVID: I know all this. You can't make me change my inerpretation. To popularize his findings Shapiro was on Huntington Post with a series of articles I've followed, using anthropomorhized interpretive writings to sell his ideas to the reading public. So what.-The quote was in answer to your claim that Shapiro did not describe the method of cooperation. He did, as do all the other scientists I have cited. Why would they all deliberately mislead the public? How will that make them popular? Is it not possible that as a result of their research they genuinely believe cells are intelligent?-DAVID: The point is the art and science of instinct is a dead end. We don't know how it works. We can observe it but have no idea of its origins, planned or developed and how was it developed? Evolution can cover all of this and we can see body plan evolution in action but mental action is hidden from us.-Nor do we know how independent intelligence works. We can observe it but have no idea of its origins. Many researchers have observed it in ants and cells, but apparently they are all poppycockists, wooly liberals or popularity-seekers.-dhw: If the whole of the ID community supports your hypothesis [...] why do you have to resort to subjectively interpreted "implications" instead of concrete references?
DAVID: Because there are constant concrete references in the website Uncommon Descent, open to everyone. Take a look.-Please don't subject me to a long search. Just give me one reference to an article explicitly arguing that God implanted billions of programmes into the very first cells, to ensure that billions of years later organisms would produce billions of innovations, adaptations, lifestyles and strategies, with God occasionally dabbling along the way. And please explain why if this is such a common hypothesis, you claimed that it was "entirely of your own making".-DAVID (referring to the fire ant raft): You are reading popular science reporting. It reads like ants are human. That is the way non-scientists like to get their science news. And the writers provide it that way. Of course ants are aware, and they cooperate, because they have to to achieve the goal of floating in a river. Their instinct drives each ant to do his part. But each ant has no idea why he is doing it. He simple knows what to do from his genome in the brain.-Nobody is claiming that ants are human. The claim is that they are aware, cognitive, sentient, able to process information, communicate and cooperate, take and implement decisions, work out strategies ... all of these being signs that they are "intelligent" in their own right. You now agree that they are aware, and in order to cooperate they must have means of communication and the means to process whatever is communicated, so how do you know they are unaware of what and why they are communicating? And do please tell us whether you think God preprogrammed the raft strategy in the very first living cells, or did a dabble to save the ants, Noah-like, from the flood?