Biological complexity:how toxoplasmosis parasitizes (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, December 04, 2016, 17:43 (2690 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You use demonstrated intelligent activity of bacteria to justify your hypothesis that a committee of cells can understand this project and work it out. And yet the possibility of bacterial intelligence is a 50/50 proposition: either they can act intelligently or they follow intelligent instructions they contain, and no one on Earth can tell the difference, me or especially Shapiro. Did you really look at the diagrams of the pores? I come from a view of incredulity. Aren't you incredulous?

dhw" Yes, and yes. That is why I accept the possibility of a God who designed the cell in the first place. However, if the chances of the cell/cell community being intelligent are 50/50, we have good reason not to reject the hypothesis, which is your stance. I do not expect you to believe it, but what happened to open-mindedness? Outright rejection of a 50/50 hypothesis is prejudice, not science.

The 50/50 odds I give are based on the fact that we are not inside the bacterial cell. In my opinion, from the outside, there is much more to consider. The bacterial reactions are all molecular responses when they are studied. The movement of the architecture within the bacteria (flagellum) is all mechanical. All of it is perfectly consistent with automatic response guided by automatic messages from the genome. This is the way cells act in our bodies, and I see no difference in lone bacteria. Therefore I am 99% sure that bacteria are automatons. I don't just look at the obvious 50/50 odds. I go much deeper.

dhw:Of course God is in the picture, and so is chance. I am a 50/50 agnostic, and find both hypotheses equally difficult to believe. That is why I leave open the question of the ORIGIN of the intelligent cell. Once again, that has no bearing on the question of whether evolution is the result of God’s total control, planning, preprogramming and dabbling, or is a free-for-all, possibly designed as such by your God.

I am 50/50 agnostic. I do not believe in God or in chance. I do not disbelieve in God or in chance.

I understand your position which avoids the evidence of purpose.