Biological complexity: how we smell odors (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 01, 2016, 12:48 (3097 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I don't have a problem when you agree - as you frequently do - that there is a 50/50 chance that you are wrong. Under “Denton” you have acknowledged that “lesser” organisms are able to recognize beneficial relationships, and again you agree that nobody knows the extent to which individual cells (bacteria) can think.
DAVID: The implication of the way you have stated my position is wrong. No one knows if cells think. But that is a concept I totally reject. They cannot think, but are programmed to look as if they can. Thru God's agency.-As I said in the rest of the passage you have quoted: “...all too often you state your negative view as fact.” This dogmatic approach colours all your thinking, even though the concept of the intelligent cell is in no way a threat to your theism. Of course, you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, and as nobody knows the truth, you may be right, but this forum is a quest for possible truths (we are never going to establish absolute, objective truths), so I hope you will forgive me if I continue to probe, as with your comment under “intercellular signalling”: 
 
DAVID: It is all molecular, purposeful transmembrane reactions:-http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/45904/title/Kissing-Cousins/&...-All communication (other than what we term “psychic”) depends on molecular reactions of one sort or another. The mystery is not the technique of communicating but the source of the messages to be communicated.-David's comment: this exact mechanism is not the important point. It is a good illustration of how cells communicate in organisms, and these various communication techniques are still being found. This may look like the cells are intelligent in signaling, but the opposite view is this is an aspect of intelligent planning in the information that is at the basis of life's processes.-If the cells don't do their own “planning”, either your God preprogrammed all the messages when life began, or he personally provided and provides them ad hoc (dabbled/dabbles) when each new situation arises. This seems to me somewhat less likely than cells doing their own processing and taking their own decisions on what to communicate to one another. It is perfectly possible that what looks like intelligence actually is intelligence, and of course they may have acquired their intelligence “thru God's agency”.-DAVID: If one believes, as I do in cause and effect, there must be a first cause.

dhw: Once more, I also believe in cause and effect, but that does not mean the first cause has to be a conscious mind. 
DAVID: You can have your first cause and I can have mine. At least my thinking type can explain the complexity of reality.-Fair comment. Unfortunately, an atheist could say that an infinite and eternal process of self-transforming energy and matter would eventually and inevitably produce the same complexity of our reality.