David's theory of evolution Part One (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 13, 2019, 11:19 (1835 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: It doesn't get around the problem that cells are observed from the outside. You are simply quoting impressions, not proof.

dhw: Nobody can observe other organisms from the inside. We draw conclusions from their behaviour, and you have agreed that there is a 50/50 chance that “my” scientists are right.

DAVID: Thanks for agreeing it is all impressions, not a real proof basis for theory.

And there is no “real proof evidence” for your theory that cells were preprogrammed by your God 3.8 billion years ago, so why don’t you just consider the comparative likelihood of the two theories?

QUOTE from "Nature’s Wonders": “It's a very charismatic, conspicuous behavior,” McCreery adds. […] Scientists use similar traps to capture wild specimens.

DAVID: certainly a learned behavior which is now an instinct.

dhw: Learned from what? Your God’s 3.8-billion-year-old trap-building programme, or your God popping in to give the ants a few lessons so that they could keep life going until he fulfilled his one and only purpose of designing H. sapiens? Do you not consider it possible that just as scientists use their intelligence to build similar traps, the ants might have done the same, and then passed the technique on to subsequent generations? Ditto with cell communities and their strategies for survival.

DAVID: Cell committees are not ants who have brains and could have noted molted feathers on the forest floor trapped insects in dips in the ground. Not the same as autonomous ants all doing the same thing as in bridges.

I had misunderstood you! All these years I thought you believed that ant strategies and all the other natural wonders you have presented to us had been preprogrammed or dabbled by your God, but now you agree that all of these natural wonders have been designed by the autonomous intelligence of the organisms themselves. A red letter day in the history of the AgnosticWeb.
I often use ants as an analogy for cell communities, but it’s true that cells do not have brains. The fact that their behaviour displays the same sort of intelligence displayed by ants (they process information, communicate, take decisions etc.) suggests to me – as it must to the many pro-cellular-intelligence scientists who specialize in the field – that they have their own equivalent of a brain.

dhw: Even you believe that the plastic human brain makes its own decisions autonomously, so why can’t you accept the possibility that the mouse brain and the ant brain and the bacterium’s equivalent of a brain might also make their own decisions autonomously?

DAVID: See above. I think they do.

Hallelujah! Except that a few minutes later you posted an article about ants, and drew this conclusion:

DAVID: No question. Ants are genetically programmed for their individual caste tasks. With God in charge of evolution, He well can be the designer/programmer.

The interplay between environment and organism determines behaviour, and the authors have uncovered the chemical processes that take place when the behaviour changes - “similar to humans”. All forms of behaviour are either determined by or give rise to chemical processes. However, genetic programming – applicable to all organisms including ourselves – does not explain the origin of strategies such as ant farming, mechanical engineering, insect traps, bridge-building etc., which I am happy to say you have now attributed to the autonomous intelligence of the ants themselves. Thank you again.