Cell Memories (Identity)

by dhw, Monday, August 04, 2014, 13:27 (3763 days ago) @ David Turell

As these posts are getting quite long and repetitive, I will try once more to summarize the salient points. Shapiro and others tell us that cells are “sentient, subjective, cognitive, communicative and intelligent”. I have put forward the hypothesis that the intelligent cell is responsible for all the innovations that have enabled evolution to progress (via punctuated equilibrium) from bacteria to ourselves. I don't know how the mechanism originated (maybe your God invented it) or how it works. You refuse to accept that cells are “intelligent”, and insist that they are automata merely obeying God's instructions, though you don't know how this works either (“God did it, I just don't know how”). You believe evolution happened, and have rejected detailed preplanning and separate creation of every innovation.
 
You have quite rightly emphasized the enormous complexity of our organs. We know that this requires communication and cooperation between cells and cell communities, but you argue that they are not intelligent enough to invent or cooperate to the degree required. Bearing in mind the fact that every organ is a community of cells working together and in harmony with other communities of cells, and that every innovation required the same cooperation, here is the choice:-1) Your God made plans for the liver and a billion other innovations to be passed down from the first organisms to their zillions of descendants. 
2) Your God fiddled around with a few unlivered organisms till he'd delivered the livers, and ditto for the billions of other innovations. 
3) Livers and the billions of other innovations accidentally fashioned themselves through random mutations (rejected by both of us).
4) Cell communities combined their intelligence (which may have been invented by your God) to design the liver and the billions of other innovations, as and when environmental change demanded or allowed them.
5) ??? (you tell me).