Species consciousness and instinct. (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, October 27, 2013, 17:44 (4045 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I've said they are automatons over and over. But I assume they have a small set of choices based on the type and strength of stimuli they receive.-dhw:Yes, you have said that. But you have also said that God didn't design everything, gave living organisms the ability to respond with unique answers, and gave them some degree of "epigenetic" decision-making.-DAVID: No, no. no!! Not unique answers. A limited number of pre-designed responses, a,b,or c based on stimuli charcteristics. A very small degree of choice. -It's little wonder that I find your answers confusing. On 23 October you wrote: "......He didn't design everything. He gave living organisms the ability to respond with unique answers." Now it's no, no, no!! But even this scenario requires explanation. Archie Optrex runs away from Tyrone Sore-Ass, and God lets him choose between a,b,c: keep running, disappear, or fly ... so he chooses to fly, and hey presto God invented flight? Is this God's technique of Natural Selection? "Choose the wrong one, matey, and out you go!" In any case, even a choice of three requires a degree of awareness. Does an automaton have the power of choice between three options? And that's without mentioning the thousand and one strategies my poor old ants have to come up with to meet the thousand and one different situations they're going to be confronted with. Each one accompanied by a potentially fatal multiple choice exam paper?-dhw: The Mayweather sidestep. All responses depend on the type of stimulus received. The question is the freedom of choice in the response. Do you, for example, believe your God specifically preprogrammed fly eyes, brontosaurus eyes, octopus eyes, eagle eyes, human eyes...or did he give each cell community (organism) the ability to develop its own form of vision, just as the ant community may well have developed its own architecture, lifestyle and strategies through the collaboration of many individual intelligences?-DAVID: Very little freedom as I have always suggested. It requires a brain for large plans to develop.-So do you believe God specifically preprogrammed each different form of eye, or did he give each cell community (organism) the ability to respond with its own (unique) answers? As you'll have gathered, I'm having great difficulty following your line of thought, and so it would be very helpful if you would just explain what innovations and variations you think your God preprogrammed into the very first living things, what kind of choices were left to the individual cell communities (organisms), and how they could choose and yet have no intelligence of their own to allow them to make a choice. A concrete example would be very useful.