>>11095257Biology has always posed a problem for the mechanistic approach to science and biologists have always continued to think in terms of purposes – hearts are for pumping blood, eyes for seeing, immune systems for maintaining the health of the organism, etc.
A single-cell produces a wider variety of items than all of human manufacturing – at least up until very recently. All the parts must work together in an incredibly tiny space far beyond the capacities of human engineering. When the cell divides and copies its DNA the process goes through multiple layers of error correction until errors are reduced to almost zero – in a very similar way to computer systems, and cellphone operation. There is error correction built into the communication between your cell phone and the cell tower. This is all teleological, not random.
Now that most practicing biologists have abandoned random mutation as the driver of evolutionary change, it is time to educate the public. Since we ourselves are conscious and intelligent, responding to our environments, seeing that intelligence extends down to the cellular level can be uplifting. It means we are surrounded by beings somewhat like ourselves rather than being caught in some mindless machine stripped of purposes.
