David's theory of evolution Part One (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, November 13, 2019, 19:53 (1835 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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.

Wow! What a misinterpretation. I simply said brains in ants can reach some simple conclusions, which cell committees are incapable of doing from your illogical extrapolations:

dhw: 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.

Wow! None of your scientists talk about the equivalent of a cellular brain. They simply note the cells show reactions that appear to be intelligent, an impression which is never proof.

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.

dhw: 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.

I don't know what the hallelujah is. Our brain can do some plastic changes in responses to new use. Bacteria live on their own and are programmed for automatic responses to their needs, which are very simple. Avoid trouble, find food, quorum sense and fight if necessary.

dhw: 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.

I've agreed ants can learn some things because they have brains unlike single cells which do not. That learning can lead to instincts in which individual ants are each programmed to do their individual tasks.