More Denton: Reply to David (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, July 25, 2015, 15:08 (3409 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You always seem to think that such statements mean “equating” other organisms with humans, but no one is saying that their intelligence, let alone their level of self-awareness, is the same as ours. However, their form of intelligence enables them to accomplish astonishing feats (Nature's Wonders) that may be unique to themselves and require “exquisite planning”. 
DAVID: Whoa! Please reread that sentence. You are granting them an intelligence instead of hypothesizing one?-Fair comment. It does not alter the fact that you seem unable to conceive of any form of intelligence other than our own. That is why you concoct a 3.8 billion-year-computer programme for all wonders and innovations rather than grant your God the capacity to create a different form of intelligence.
 
dhw:I simply don't accept your contention that weaverbirds, ants, plovers, spiders, monarch butterflies etc. are incapable of designing their own habitats and lifestyles. And if I am right, then their inventive intelligence may mirror that of all cells/cell communities.
DAVID: Agreed if you are right.-Thank you. There is hope yet.-dhw: “Natural assumptions” are sometimes another term for preconceptions. Why should your God not have given other organisms the ability to do their own exquisite planning (as above)?
DAVID: He might have given them an IM, I've agreed.-No, until now you have insisted that it is not autonomous but is preprogrammed or dabbled with (concepts you try to gloss over with the weasel word “guided”). That does NOT constitute inventiveness. Do you now agree that he might have given other organisms the ability to do their own exquisite planning?-dhw: When discussing cells, you always focus on the chemical processes that accompany the actions they perform, but these do not explain the decision-making process that leads to those actions.
DAVID: Those decision-making processes can all be automatic biochemical reactions, just as our kidney cells decide the urine concentrations for the day.
-“Can be”. They can also be mental processes, just as our brain produces decisions, strategies, and inventions. You have already agreed that each possibility is as likely as the other, and yet you still exclude one because it does not fit in with your preconceptions.-dhw: Even if we humans are the most intelligent organisms on Earth, that does not mean your God's purpose in creating the universe was to produce us.
DAVID: But in my view it can mean that.-When Tony disagreed with you that humans were God's purpose in creating the universe, you shifted the focus to humans being the pinnacle because they were the most complex. (I presume you now accept that this only applies mentally and not physically.) There is a huge difference between your estimation of man's abilities, which has nothing to do with God, and your attempt to read God's mind - an exercise you always warn us against, although you give yourself permission to do it when you feel like it!