All behavior in higher animals, including man, will be strongly influenced by DNA programming; however, higher up the evolutionary ladder there can be little doubt that the presence of consciousness must be introduced into the equation pertaining to the decision-making process. Behavior becomes increasingly less predictable as the lifeform becomes more complex. Human conscious choosing is a special development that has slowly evolved through a long tortuous process. When a person makes choices it involves selection from a very large set of possible actions. When a bacterium makes choices there are a very limited number of possible actions to choose between.⁶⁵...The types of choices open to a bacterium center primarily around what enzyme systems it will employ to continue its metabolic processes. It has many alternative pathways to choose from depending upon what nutrients are available in its immediate environment. Flagellated bacteria such as Vibrio cholerae have a tail which allows them to be more mobile than others. They have a choice as to where they propel themselves.⁶⁶...The choices of a bacterium are not unlimited, and they have been predetermined by natural selection.

All life involves selection between alternative possibilities. Evolution has enabled plants and animals a wide range of possible choices, thereby increasing their chance of survival in an ever-widening range of habitats.

As organisms become more complicated they come to need a larger and larger variety of possible actions to help avoid destruction. All living things must make choices. No two living organisms are exactly and identically the same chemically, and because of this it is impossible to predict the behavior of any single organism.⁶⁷

All life forms demonstrate astonishing unity, including the capacity to build their own parts, increasing differentiation through time, the power of self-repair and self-regeneration, the ability to transform other materials into self, and natural action from within.⁶⁸...All of these are manifestations of intelligence.

Our bodies contain in excess of one hundred thousand billion (1014) cells which are working cooperatively with each other.⁶⁹...These cells collectively contain 1029 elementary particles.⁷⁰...Each cell contains a nucleus, inside of which the DNA-containing genes carry encoded information. This stored information is under the control of the intelligence system, which is responsible for directing all cellular behavior. Within the cellular membranes surrounding the nucleus there is a gelatinous substance, cytoplasm, that contains a variety of other structures collectively referred to as organelles. These correspond in function to organs contained in higher life forms. One such organelle would be mitochondria, of which there are many. They act as the "lungs" by picking up oxygen entering the cell and then using it to release energy. Cellular respiration can be thought of as a precursor of pulmonary respiration. Ribosomes, which form another class of organelles, build proteins much like the liver. They pick up amino acids that enter the cell and, following their genetically coded instructions, manufacture whatever proteins are required to accomplish cellular metabolism. Waste is handled by other organelles, the lysozomes, and excreted from the cell.⁷¹

It was discussed in an earlier chapter how the immune system displays evidence of intelligence at the cellular level. This is a further example of how intelligence governs the action and direction of all living tissue.

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