Bacterial electrical communication (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, September 11, 2017, 13:10 (2629 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: So I hope it is clear to you that Shapiro, who has spent a lifetime studying the subject, believes in bacterial intelligence.

DAVID:He knows they appear intelligent. I agree. With provided instructions the outward appearance is the same!"
So, of course how they respond implies intelligence underlying those responses. At what level, primary or secondary?

See my final comment below:

DAVID’S comment (under "Ant colony"): Makes good organizational sense. Certainly doing it by instinct at this point. Originally guided by God?

dhw: [...] My speculation would be originally guided by their own intelligence. God may come into it when we ask where their intelligence came from.

DAVID: The other issue is the origin of the different classes of ants to set up their societal arrangement. God again?

dhw: Amazing how your God creates all these variations when his prime purpose is to produce the brain of homo sapiens. I would suggest ant intelligence again. Different species and different classes of species work out their own social arrangements – a talent inherited by us humans.

DAVID: Did the ants invent their own classes of societal level?

Of course. Do you think humans were the first social organisms? Every society from insects to animals, including us, has different levels. Or are you saying that your God has to preprogramme or dabble with every social organism except humans, who follow the same pattern as other social organisms but don’t need God to work it out for them?

DAVID: (under “plant memory”) New research into plant memories:

QUOTE: "In the study of the plant kingdom, a slow revolution is underway. Scientists are beginning to understand that plants have abilities, previously unnoticed and unimagined, that we’ve only ever associated with animals. In their own ways, plants can see, smell, feel, hear, and know where they are in the world. One recent study found that clusters of cells in plant embryos act a lot like brain cells and help the embryo to decide when to start growing

DAVID (comment juxtaposed): He knows they appear intelligent. I agree. With provided instructions the outward appearance is the same!

I wonder why you are always so desperate to deny intelligence to organisms that have no brain or only a small brain. These findings present no threat to your God, who would have designed the mechanisms in the first place. They only threaten your theory that he is a control freak who won’t allow any organism (except humans) to work out its own way of life.