Immunity: detecting dangerous bacteria (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 29, 2017, 18:34 (2552 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: When you say: “Show me the bacterial equivalent of a brain. There isn’t one neuron in sight”, you are clearly referring to the material presence of brain and neuron. If you believe intelligence/the “soul” to be immaterial and independent of the brain, then it cannot be shown as a material presence, and it is therefore a contradiction to say an organism can’t be intelligent if you can't see a brain.

DAVID: You keep skipping over the point that consciousness/soul is received by the brain to be used by the owner of that brain to create the immaterial thoughts and concepts.

Nothing skipped. According to you, the owner of the brain IS the soul, since that is what survives the death of the brain! So now you have the thoughts of the soul being received by the brain so that the soul can do its thinking! Once again: it is consciousness/the soul that creates immaterial thoughts and concepts, and consciousness is not visible! Therefore it is a non sequitur to say that if you can’t see the brain of a bacterium, the bacterium can’t be conscious.

dhw: Albrecht-Buehler’s book is called Cell Intelligence. He and the others, who have spent a lifetime studying the evidence, have concluded that cells are intelligent. “Reinterpret their conclusions” is a fluffy way of saying you think you know more than they do, and their conclusions are wrong. You are of course fully entitled to your opinion, but a little grain of open-mindedness would be welcome.

DAVID: We have covered all of this before. From the outside no one can determine whether the cell responds automatically under intelligent instructions or is actually intelligent. Believing in God as I do, I am on the side of intelligent instructions.

If one can’t tell the difference, then one should acknowledge that both versions are possible. It has nothing whatsoever to do with belief in God. It is just as possible that your God created an autonomous intelligence as it is that 3.8 billion years ago he created programmes for every single action of every single cell for the rest of time, barring his dabbles.

DAVID: As part of my body my kidneys act intelligently. Why can't bacteria be seen that way?
dhw: Here you have missed the point of the McClintock quote above. And you yourself wrote that immune cells learn by experience and change themselves to fit their discoveries. That is a hallmark of autonomous intelligence.
DAVID: Not missed at all. Immune cells can be programmed to respond in the way they do in my body, just like kidney cells.

At least “can be” is an improvement on “are”. And since when was learning by experience an automatic process?