Natures wonders: ant rafts and towers (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Sunday, July 23, 2017, 19:29 (2678 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: My objection originally was to your interpretation denying the author's results that individual ants acted automatically. I still agree with their interpretation, God not needed.

dhw: I am, of course, delighted that you do not think your God was needed to design these extraordinary feats of engineering, but bearing in mind that there must have been a first raft and a first tower, I don’t understand what you or the authors mean by “automatically”. Do you really think those first raft and tower builders didn’t know what they were doing?

DAVID: Each individual ant knew what he was naturally doing, the point of the article, resulting in the group acting together.

dhw: One would not expect any organisms (other than humans!) to act unnaturally, and one would expect social organisms to act together. I don’t see that as meaning that the ants act “automatically” as opposed to intelligently. You constantly point to complexity as evidence of intelligent design. Ant rafts and towers are complex feats of engineering, and so if your God was not needed, they are clear evidence of ant intelligence.

Intelligent design of intelligent creatures of with varying degrees of intelligence. I do not see these as mutually exclusive. Though, they all kind of blow random chance right out of the water. However, with all the intelligence DHW continually talks about, where are the more complex signs of intelligence. I don't mean climbing up your buddies back not to drown, or floating while linked up(which is what sea survival training teaches you to do). Where are the signs of higher intelligence? If cells are intelligent, and that intelligence grows when in a community (multicellular life) why are humans they only creatures that exhibit our degree of intelligence? Surely brain mass alone can not account for it, and neither can size, as ants lack both and perform some impressive feats. Where is expression that we should be seeing in larger life forms if DHW's theory of cellular intelligence is correct?

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.