slime mold decisions: begins to study loners (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, May 23, 2020, 11:14 (1643 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This is about individual cells who make decisions.

dhw: And the ability to make decisions is one of the characteristics of intelligence.

DAVID: It is also a characteristic of intelligently designed automatic responses.

So back to 50/50, which is no reason for rejecting any theory.

Bumble bees can change the timing of flowering to suit their needs:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2244009-bees-force-plants-to-flower-early-by-cutti...

DAVID: Leaves don't taste like pollen. We must ask how did this start to become an instinct. The flowering occurs somewhat long after the leaf munching, so it is not visual observation. Does the bee see leaf damage and then later observes earlier flowering and mentally makes the connection to start chomping? No answer here. Perhaps God helped?

dhw: Which means, presumably, perhaps God programmed bumble-bee-leaf-biting 3.8 billion years ago, or God gave bumble bees a course in leaf-biting. A theistic alternative to be considered is that God might have given ALL organisms the intelligence to see, observe and make mental connections.

DAVID: The mental connections you want require the bees to put different observations at different times into a clearly thought out new concept: bite leaves and pollen will come. It requires a human level of thought. Bee level is not that.

Nobody is claiming that bees have a human level of thought, but they observe, remember, communicate and cooperate. Once a discovery has been made, it will be passed on. Out of interest, which of your two methods of “help” do you think more likely: God programmed leaf-biting 3.8 billion years ago, or he stepped in to teach a few lucky bees how to do it?