Explaining natural wonders: bacterial intelligence (Animals)

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 31, 2017, 15:55 (2732 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I take exception to the wording of A. God did not purposefully design disease bacteria. The disease they cause are a result of their natural lifestyle taking them to the wrong place for them to live. This is accidental.

dhw: So although 3.8 billion years ago your God deliberately preprogrammed some bacteria to combat current human use of materials to kill them, he didn’t know they were going to create the circumstances in which they would need to be preprogrammed to combat current human use of materials to kill them.

Stop twisting my words. Antibiotics are a natural material. We have discovered and used them. Bacteria have survived without difficulty even though they are present, and they do that because they have alternative pathways to use if they are attacked. Since bacteria are representatives of the earliest life, we should conclude they came with those defense mechanisms.

dhw: 2) I accept that we do not “know” if bacteria are intelligent or not – it is a hypothesis – but please tell me why it makes no sense to argue that they might use their intelligence to solve problems, as opposed to the equally unproven 1).
DAVID: Because the source of intelligence when first life appeared is totally a pipedream to me, if it supposedly appeared de novo by chance. I view chance or design as the only alternatives. A designing mind is required.

dhw: Sorry, I forgot that you would forget: why does it make no sense to argue that bacteria might use their (possibly God-given) intelligence to solve problems, as opposed to the equally unproven 1)?

I fully accept that God gave bacteria alternative metabolic pathways which they can

DAVID: I'm simply exploring newly thought of possibilities. Humans are always the goal. Complexity has always been the evolutionary drive. Creating complexity beautifully explains those darn whales.

dhw: You are exploring the possibility that I have been hammering away at year after year: that all the species, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct may NOT be related to the one and only purpose of creating humans. The rich diversity of life, with all its comings and goings, may be a purpose in itself – the result of your God’s "exuberance", and a source of pleasure to him.

Diversity can be another side purpose for that pleases humans also.

dhw: Please stop moaning about Darwin and stick to the arguments. We are ALL theorizing, and you and I have theorized that the reason life advanced beyond bacteria is a drive for improvement (me) or complexity (you). Personally I believe that competition and cooperation have had an enormous role to play in the history of evolution: the reference to carnivores (under “Earth’s environmental role”) illustrates the effect of competition, and evolution would have been impossible without cell communities cooperating with one another to form new structures, whether guided by God or not. But if you reject such theories, so be it.

Everybody munching out is simply a reference to the abundant energy supply for life to continue and for evolution to advance, if it needs to. Chicxulub shows the power of environmental change over predation. I think evolution is over. And I reject cell committees thinking things out.