Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 26, 2013, 08:50 (3986 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw:If "implanted information" means the ability to make their own decisions and to innovate, then it's the same as saying God gave cells an intelligence of their own. If you mean God implanted the programme for the different adaptations and innovations, i.e. that cells are merely obeying God's instructions, we are back where you started. 
DAVID: That is where I start. Cell information had to come from somewhere. God is the best choice.-Once again you are scuttling off to hide behind the flexible term "information". Let us say, then, that God gave cells the internal information that enables them to gather information from outside, process it, communicate with one another, make decisions and implement their decisions. These latter abilities are what I understand by intelligence, and by that definition, cells are intelligent.-DAVID: But the obvious thrust is to get to conscious humans. Darwin's theory of evolution requires need for change produced though competition in variation. I have never seen the need for us. We were not required by the environment to appear. We were not required by necessity.-We have long since agreed that humans were not "necessary" and indeed nothing was "necessary" once bacteria appeared on earth. There is no reason to suppose that the trilobite, the Venus flytrap, the raft-making fire-ant, or Tyrannosaurus Rex were "necessary" either. The fact that so many organisms have survived on Earth so much longer than us hardly makes us into an "obvious thrust", let alone something that was preprogrammed right from the very first cells.