Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, November 11, 2013, 20:01 (4028 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Very similar to ants, and considerably less similar to computers. This is not human "intelligence", but intelligence of their own kind.
DAVID: Yes, the intelligence is of a kind that exists in a planning process, that I predict will be found in DNA.-So God even preprogrammed the billion and one bacterial adaptations into the first cells, as well as all the innovations leading to humans. It's a wonder they didn't burst.-DAVID: As a writer you like the romanticism of the scientists' anthropomorphic descriptions. 
dhw: They don't seem to be able to find any other form of description. It's as though our own intelligence is simply a vast extension of the intelligence we have inherited from the cellular communities that were our ancestors. It always surprises me when people accept the idea that we are descended from lesser organisms and yet can't quite accept the idea that what we are derives from them. 
DAVID: Of course, if we accept evolution there is a derivation from the lesser organisms. Our descent does not make the derivation smaller, as you imply. You mention the 'vast extension' yourself. You just don't want to think of it as vast enough to make us different in kind. Tell me if there a is a dividing line of difference for you, or will you refuse to accept any dividing line and keep moving the goal posts?-I will say yet again that the distinction between degree and kind is irrelevant to me. It is important to you because you want to buttress your belief in anthropocentric evolution. This raises any number of impossible questions, such as how God could have preprogrammed the first cells with all the innovations leading to humans; why there have been so many extinctions...I needn't repeat all the problems, as we've discussed them endlessly. Of course I accept, and always have accepted, that there is a vast, colossal, huge, massive ... how many adjectives would you like? - difference between our mental capacity and that of all other organisms. If that is as a result of our enlarged brain (I prefer to keep an open mind about the source of our consciousness), I would take it to be the equivalent of a dog's vastly more advanced sense of smell because his nose contains upwards of 125 million sensory cells compared to our 5-10 million. Do you think this gap large enough to argue that dogs are different from us in kind, and therefore God guided evolution towards dogs? We don't need dividing lines or goalposts. We know our differences, and we know our similarities. Since I neither believe nor disbelieve in God, you can hardly expect me to support your claim that God created life in order to produce humans, and I suspect that is what underlies your hostility towards the intelligent cell hypothesis as well as your insistence on "kind" rather than "degree".