Natures wonders: making spider silk (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, August 12, 2014, 18:38 (3754 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: The similarity to your panentheism is, however, very important. If you can believe your “universal intelligence” is in all things, you can hardly reject out of hand the hypothesis that all things are intelligent, as is clear from your next remark:
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> DAVID: I'll grant you, if God is actually within everything and everyone, then your cells could work, using all the wisdom God can impart. Will you put God in there?
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> dhw: My hypothesis is an alternative, not a belief: God may or may not exist, God may or may not be in there, and God may or may not have invented the autonomously intelligent cell, if it exists as such. But your comment admits the possibility of cells doing their own unpreprogrammed, undabbled-with inventing, provided we say that their form of intelligence is part of God's intelligence, and by God you mean a single universal mind.-Now you see the light. A little bit of God in every cell allows Him to control evolution. That makes sense.-> dhw: Cells and even particles have their own individual, autonomous forms of intelligence, and they combine to create more and more complex forms of intelligence, so that by a process of emergence through billions and billions of years, the particles of the universe and the cells of living organisms have evolved to their present state of complexity. Some people believe these billions of combined intelligences are all one, and they call it “God”.-Now you are off the deep end again. Complexity requires planning and coordination. Tell me how that works in your scheme, not simply repeating an amorphous 'combining to create' pipedream. As you cook a lovely sea bass for dinner, does the fish tell you how to do it?