Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 13, 2013, 16:13 (3809 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The crucial change came when some cells decided to cooperate. .....And one experiment led to another, as different communities of cells created different forms of life. Cooperation is the key, and it does not in any way shut out your God, who could have given cells their ability to cooperate in the first place. It only shuts out your notion that God planted a few billion innovative and adaptive programmes into the first few cells.-DAVID: Nail on the head: I have admitted in the past an either or. I cannot know if God implanted all the plans or interceded and pushed the cells to group together as organs by direct dabbling. Independence of God's options is not feasible as chance takes over. You just want intelligent cells with no theory of how they got that way.-That is a complete non sequitur. The whole point of the intelligent cell scenario is that chance does not take over. Each cell community with its combined intelligences takes its own decisions according to prevailing conditions. We are dealing with how evolution works, not with the origin of intelligence (we have discussed the God, chance, and panpsychist hypotheses many times). According to you, the purpose of evolution was to produce humans, who are unique and must be the product of direct dabbling, or special divine programmes inserted into the very first cells. And yet there are countless life forms that are also unique, and so those too must have been the product of direct dabbling or special divine preprogramming of the very first cells. I am flabbergasted at what God must have packed into those first few cells, and I am puzzled by your God's special focus (preplanned or dabbled) on the Venus flytrap, the dog's nose, the elephant's trunk, and all the other billions of unique forms, organs, lifestyles, when according to you it's humans he's aiming at. If I believed in God, I would find an intelligent, infinitely flexible mechanism more convincing as an explanation for the variety of life forms, but you refuse point blank to contemplate this alternative, even if your God invented it.