cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, October 17, 2020, 12:01 (1496 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: [...] What they described is a step toward multicellularity, nothing more. It is all another forced extrapolation which your bias prefers to accept.

dhw: […] Do you or do you not agree that bacteria are single-celled organisms, and they join together in a single cooperative community which performs coordinated activities? If you do agree, how does that NOT count as multicellularity?

DAVID: I view multicellularity as a much more complex arrangement than single cells cooperating. That is a step on the way, just as Edicarans were multicellular but so much simpler than Cambrians.

What else is multicellularity if it is not single cells cooperating? The increasing complexity would be the result of millions and millions of years during which cells increased their range of activity and knowledge as they met with new conditions.
[…]
DAVID: There is no question God gave organisms the ability to adapt to changing conditions, but that does not mean they could self-speciate.

Do you agree, then, that adaptation is an autonomous mechanism, or do you think your God pre-planned every adaptation 3.8 billion years ago, or stepped in to dabble each one? You are quite right that adaptation is not the same as speciation, but it is sometimes difficult to draw a line between the two (e.g. pre-whales adapting to marine life, with legs giving way to fins). The theory therefore remains feasible: if there is a mechanism for cells autonomously restructuring themselves to make minor changes, maybe they were able to make major changes as well.

DAVID: I don't know how God ran the process of evolution, as you note, but my thoughts are not unreasonable.

What is unreasonable is (a) your total rejection of what you agree is a 50/50 chance (cellular intelligence), and (b) your whole anthropocentric theory of evolution (= direct design) as dissected on various threads.

DAVID: You think cells are intelligent. How did they develop intelligence? It seems I always propose theories and you poke holes. Do you have a solid theory for cell intelligence source?

You know perfectly well that nobody has a "solid" theory about any of our subjects, but in this particular one, God is a possible source. However, we are not arguing here about the source! We are arguing about the concept of cellular intelligence, whether designed by God or not. Yes, I poke holes in your theories as you do in mine, but there is one great difference between us: your theories are fixed beliefs, whereas mine are alternatives but not fixed beliefs. However, in the case of the intelligent cell, I must confess I do find it vastly more credible than your fixed belief that every single development and natural wonder in the history of life on Earth was either preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or was personally dabbled by your God as “part of the goal of evolving humans”.
X
DAVID: Shapiro tells us bacteria can edit their genome. Great example. Which I think is a God=given attribute God gave them.

Wonderful. If a single cell can edit its genome, it makes perfect sense to assume that lots of cells can edit their genome. Hence the birth of the intelligent cell community and a simple explanation for how evolution works: every cell community edits its genome in order to adapt to or exploit changing conditions, as exemplified by single-celled bacteria.