bacterial intelligence shown to be DNA driven (Animals)

by David Turell , Friday, October 13, 2017, 18:57 (2597 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Totally misses the point. The bacteria are responding to DNA alterations of living instructions. My battered body still has an intact DNA. Comparing injury to changing instructions. Apples and oranges.

dhw: So are you telling me that if scientists were given a totally free hand to mess about with human DNA (as they can with bacteria) in whatever part of the body they chose, they would not be able to change the person concerned?

Messing with DNA was my point, NOW its yours. A fully formed human will not be changed, unless your scientist altered the DNA of neurons to change human behaviour. Way off the original point.

DAVID: I don't know if Shapiro really disagrees with me. He says bacteria can edit their DNA. That could be an automatic God-given mechanism. Shapiro was president of his Jewish Temple.

How often do I have to quote him? And you can add Jeffrey Stock. And belief in bacterial intelligence does not make you an atheist!

From ABC: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/the-secret-life-of-bacteria--...

"Natasha Mitchell: Flagella being like the little tail, like a little paddle.

"Jeffry Stock: Yes it's a tail that's like a propeller in fact they rotate and drives them through. But there are other bacteria that work by other mechanisms like throwing out an anchor that hooks on to something in their environment, pulling themselves along, there are all different ways that they swim but they all have the same apparatus for processing information. And that apparatus consists of thousands of protein fibres so the structure of the protein is similar to hair, and I originally called it a hairbrain -- but the fibres are made in E coli there are about 10,000 of these fibres and at one end of each fibre is a little glob of protein that binds a spectrum of chemicals in the environment. And at the other end is a glob of protein that produces a signal that controls the motor and in between there's this bundle of interacting hairs, sort of, that do the information processing. The amount of information encoded in that fibre network is impossibly complex to actually work out for any particular network. One of the reasons I thought it was like a brain was because you'll never really figure out how one works.

"Natasha Mitchell: You suggest that these nano brains can process up to 10 to the 8, that's 10 with eight zeros after it bits of information per second. Information like temperature and the nutrients in the environment; salts, Ph, measure the Ph, that sort of thing. But should we be calling it a brain, isn't that going one step too far?

"Jeffry Stock: Maybe. Well it's a brain in that it functions like a brain, it takes information like our brains do from our various sensory inputs and then it makes decisions that control motor activity. So that's what a brain does, if you don't move, you're a plant and you don't have a brain. And bacteria that don't move don't have this apparatus. It's specialised for bacteria that move, which is what brains do. What do we mean by intelligence? It isn't really all about another organism communicating with us, that's not what intelligence is about. Intelligence is about taking information in the environment and making decisions that are advantageous to the organism. Koshland said that there's no question that bacteria are the most intelligent organisms on earth, at least on a per gram weight basis because they are so small."

Just because we don't know how it works, does not mean it is not automatic. And it is too complex for chance. Intelligent design instructions are just that. The mind of God at work.