More Denton: Reply to David (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 28, 2015, 22:31 (3406 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: They are not preconceptions. I have explained my thought processes to come from agnostic to theist, and I have not seen anything since to change my mind or conclusions. 
dhw: We are not talking about agnosticism and theism but about the intelligence of bacteria. There is absolutely no reason why intelligent bacteria should be a threat to your theism, but they are a threat to your anthropocentrism.-DAVID: 'Intelligent' bacteria are not a threat to my thought processes. They could use intelligent information just because of God. My anthropocentrism is not the way you have used the word. I try not to interpret God as a mirror for human thought. That humans are the center point of evolution is a different issue asrrived at for different reasons.-The intelligence of bacteria is central to my suggestion that evolution is driven by the inventiveness of organisms themselves, whereas you insist it was all preprogrammed (or dabbled) by God, whose purpose was to end up with humans “that could relate to him”. Your anthropocentric hypothesis leaves you wriggling around to explain the enormous diversity of life, and all its comings and goings, whereas mine gives a direct explanation.-DAVID: If a bacterium feels the need to eat it will go for the food, all automatically. 
dhw: Pfeffer's point was that if a bacterium senses poison, it will avoid the poison. That was the whole purpose of his test: a conflict of interests which required a decision. He also noted that they swam extra fast. 
DAVID: The fast swim was an automatic response-You have ignored the conflict of interests which required a decision. But this is just one experiment. Do you in all honesty think that Margulis, Shapiro and Co have reached their conclusion without any evidence to back it?-DAVID: As before, I interpret them as using hyperbole. No difference, if one interprets what they do as using intelligent information.-You have scurried back to your nebulous “intelligent information”, which we already dissected ages ago. What is it supposed to mean here? There is “information” that comes to all organisms from outside and requires processing if they are to survive, adapt, or innovate. There is “information” within all organisms that enables them to do the processing. According to you the internal information was provided 3.8 billion years ago in the form of millions of computer programmes passed on by the first cells to cover every single innovation that led from bacteria to humans (plus most of Nature's Wonders). My counter hypothesis is that this internal information is in the form of intelligence (the equivalent of the human brain) which does its own processing and takes its own decisions. There is a colossal difference between the two, and it is the latter that the experts have described quite explicitly, without any hyperbole.