Immunity: detecting dangerous bacteria (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, November 25, 2017, 15:30 (2336 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: We are still in full agreement about souls. The parenthetic 'soul' simply was a reminder that the brain was the operating point for the soul. I accept God's consciousness is everywhere, but only brains 'receive' useful consciousness with which they can functionally think.

dhw: I don’t know about “accept”. You believe your God’s consciousness is everywhere, except apparently in bacteria, which are automatons that have no idea what they’re doing, and in immune cells, which learn about bacteria by experience and change their DNA to fit their discoveries but are also automatons, because without a brain apparently nothing can be autonomously intelligent. I don’t know how you distinguish between consciousness and “useful” consciousness, and I don’t know how brains can “functionally think” if the thinking is done by the “soul”. And I still don’t understand how consciousness (autonomous intelligence, the soul) “exists separate” from the brain (see first quote above), can even live on when the brain is dead, but cannot exist without a brain. In brief, your response is somewhat confusing.

I'm not confused. Consciousness is received by the brain which the soul/consciousness uses to think. NDE's show the ability to separate and rejoin and that a soul/consciousness can function without a functional brain. In my view consciousness can only exist in brains which are the only living matter that can receive it. And, of course, God can engineer anything to look intelligent with genome programming.