Immunity: detecting dangerous bacteria (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, November 30, 2017, 14:26 (2551 days ago) @ dhw

I have changed the sequence here, to make for a more coherent line of argument.

dhw: […] since when was learning by experience an automatic process?

DAVID: Shown in the cells of the immune system of a baby!

The argument is that the cells are intelligent/conscious. It makes no difference whether they are in a baby or in a centenarian.

dhw: Once again: it is consciousness/the soul that creates immaterial thoughts and concepts, and consciousness is not visible!

DAVID: By using the receiver brain which is visible.

The bacterium’s microplasts, centrosome and microtubules are also visible, which Albrecht-Buehler claims make up the equivalent of the brain, and which you accepted as a correct analysis but again dismissed as automatic. You might as well say that the receiver brain is automatic, and we are automatons too. After all, according to you, one cannot tell the difference between autonomous and automatic. (I would disagree in both cases.)

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.

dhw: 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: You forget that I believe in God and have the right to make a choice of interpretation. Both are possible. One is true.

How could I forget that you believe in God? Everybody has the right to make a choice of interpretation, whether they believe in God or not, but as I pointed out above, belief in God has nothing whatsoever to do with this particular choice. However, “both are possible” was what I was hoping to hear, and we can leave it at that until the next time you dismiss the whole idea of cellular intelligence.

Of course cells act intelligently. We disagree on the primary mechanism.