Chance v. Design (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, May 10, 2009, 13:15 (5474 days ago) @ BBella

BBella: Here is a third theory in which there is evidence. Matter, inanimate or animate, is intelligence itself. No-thing resides outside of intelligence. There is no god out there putting matter together to create anything, or directing it. It (all that is) is itself intelligence/intelligent. How intelligent? That's what we are trying to figure out...how intelligent is intelligence? When we figure it out...we will let you know. - This seems to me to be the same as pantheism, with intelligence as the god of Nature. Defining "intelligence" is a problem in itself, though (see my last paragraph). Here is one dictionary definition: "The ability to learn facts and skills and apply them, especially when this ability is highly developed." All living things must have a degree of intelligence, since they couldn't reproduce or survive without applying certain facts and skills, many of which are even more "highly developed" than our own. - I don't see any evidence of applied facts and skills in lumps of rock or grains of sand, but you could argue that if our own lump of rock (Planet Earth) hadn't formed special physical and chemical relationships with the sun, the moon, and the rest of the inorganic materials zooming around out there, we wouldn't be alive to talk about them. So perhaps this intelligence amounts to what George calls the "natural laws". - I wonder, though, if origins and consciousness aren't the two flaws in all the various theories. I would distinguish between organic and inorganic matter. The idea that if conditions are right, the intelligence of inanimate matter will be such that it can create the complex chemical combinations needed to replicate and eventually vary itself takes a lot of believing. It just puts a more "intellectual" gloss on what basically is the same as the chance theory, and that demands as much faith as the idea of a super-intelligent being directing proceedings (where did that come from?). - None of my dictionary definitions mention "consciousness", which may fit in with your theory but not with that of ID, at least as I understand it. Perhaps, then, we really need to know what you mean by intelligence, and your final question might read: "How conscious is intelligence?" Your theory, though, suggests that the original inorganic matter not only had to be intelligent enough to make itself organic, but in due course unconscious matter had to be intelligent enough to produce consciousness. Again this stretches belief. It all happened. We are here, and we are conscious, so there has to be an explanation, but it seems to me that your theory leaves just as many open questions as the other two. Please do let us know when you figure out the answers!