cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, July 19, 2017, 19:26 (2682 days ago) @ dhw

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DAVID: What you have ignored is the necessary continuity from origin of life to the existing organisms we study. If cells are intelligent, where did the original intelligence in the first cells come from? You quietly drop in a suggestion about 'God-given', but after that the only other possibility is a rocky earth somehow invented living matter and gave it intelligence at the same time. You think God is a fairy tale, I think your hypothesis is all fairy tale.

dhw: How can you say I ignore it when I offer the possibility that God is the originator? (No, I do not think God is a fairy tale. I am an agnostic, not an atheist.) The other two possibilities are sheer chance or the panpsychist hypothesis I have spent so much time describing, but none of these hypotheses are sufficiently convincing for me to believe in them, which is one reason why I remain an agnostic. The problem of origin does not in any way justify your refusal to accept the possibility of cellular intelligence, but it does provide a convenient diversion from your “large organisms chauvinism”!

You have again skipped over the continuum of intelligence point I make. The very first cells had to have intelligent information in order to function. That information cannot originate from a rocky inorganic Earth. The appearance of intelligent activity by bacteria or the cells of a multicellular organism must recognize that origin.