Smart animals: bees trained to pull strings for treat (Animals)

by dhw, Monday, October 10, 2016, 12:16 (2965 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I do not doubt that bacteria are capable of using different biochemical processes to deal with all the different problems they have faced during their 3.7 billion years of existence. All organisms use biochemical processes! Every action we humans take entails biochemical processes. And when we have problems to solve, the biochemical processes are set in motion by thought. But according to you, when bacteria have problems to solve, the biochemical processes are set in motion by a divine dabble or by a 3.7-billion-year-old computer programme which God installed in the first living cells, along with programmes for every evolutionary innovation and natural wonder. Hard to believe. - DAVID: Not hard and not current God intervention.. Given alternative pathways that can be turned on automatically, and these pathways are shown to exist, and are used by bacteria without God intervening. Automaticity of choice. - Then we can leave out divine dabbling. That's easy. The hard bit is to accept that if God does not intervene and has provided bacteria with solutions to every single problem for the last 3.7 billion years (“alternative pathways that can be turned on automatically” is a neat way to minimize the range of environments and problems that bacteria are able to cope with), then these solutions can only have been preprogrammed in the very first cells. And according to your concept of evolution, the same very first cells were also provided with every single innovation and natural wonder in the history of life on Earth (apart from those that were dabbled). THAT is what I find so hard to believe, not to mention that it is a totally unnecessary strain on credulity when there is the far simpler option of God providing the first cells with a form of evolvable intelligence.