bacterial intelligence shown to be DNA driven (Animals)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 19:00 (2375 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: If you could supply a logical source for the cellular intelligence without God I might accept your theory.

dhw: This doesn’t make sense! Why is the hypothesis of cellular intelligence only acceptable to you, a theist, if I can show that God is NOT the source? Do you think he is incapable of inventing such a thing?

DAVID: Yes, I make sense of your hypothesis. Of course God can give cells the appearance of intelligence with complete instructions for all stimuli responses, which in bacteria are a very short list: go for food sensed, avoid danger signals, put out antibiotic chemicals, sense crowds, simply cooperate with them in mats. Did bacteria develop these reactions on their own from the first cells, whose start you can't answer. I'm with God.

My hypothesis is not that your God may have given bacteria the APPEARANCE of intelligence, but that he may have given them intelligence. If we define intelligence as the ability to take in information, process it, communicate, cooperate, make decisions etc., then according to the various scientists you so kindly quoted, bacteria are intelligent. The discussion here concerns the existence of cellular intelligence, not the source of life and intelligence, which nobody knows. However, we have considered three options: a God, chance, a form of panpsychism that gradually evolved bottom upwards out of the infinite and eternal mixing of energy and matter. I know you’re with God. That does not mean there is no such thing as cellular intelligence.