Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 03, 2013, 16:58 (4007 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: I am offering a hypothesis to explain the course of evolution. One possible explanation of the "intelligent cell" is that God created it, so that gives you your one First Cause.-DAVID: Fine, I accept that possibility. What you have been doing is conjuring up intelligent cells with no real explanation, while downgrading the chance mechanism of Darwin. I'll accept it gratefully. Now you sound like an IDer. -Dhw: As an agnostic, I am open to all options though believing in none. I gratefully accept your gracious acceptance that the intelligent cell offers a possible explanation for the course of evolution...-DAVID: All I have been trying to do is have you accept the theory that the way the cells seem intelligent is that they operate from intelligent instructions (information) in their genomes, with tightly controlled responses to stimuli. Otherwise cancer.-Oh! So now we are back to "the cells seem intelligent". Let me try once more. Allowing for all the automatic processes that take place within ALL living organisms, including our highly intelligent selves, do you accept the possibility (I ask no more) that cells not only seem intelligent but actually are intelligent in their own right, as per Shapiro, Margulis, Albrecht-Buehler & Co., with your own proviso that God created the mechanism that gave them that intelligence?