Pigliucci Challenges Randomness (Religion)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 15:51 (5419 days ago) @ dhw

The only difficult part I have with your thrust dhw, is that no one knows how language came to be--it's actually a mystery that will probably never be solved. Analyzing language takes intelligence, but if you go back to say, when human babies are born, they have one "word" for everything. Parents then exhaustively try all choices (hungry, needs a change, needs love) until they figure out what the child is trying to communicate. -Animals also communicate using what could be called a language--obviously none of it as expressive (except for maybe squids, that even display syntaxes that include body positions.) -What we need to define in terms of saying that language necessitates intelligence, is define exactly how much intelligence is required, and the type. Human language requires some level of human ingenuity. Everything else is perceptual intelligence; but if we can program automatons that also utilize perceptual intelligence, doesn't this cloud the waters?-If we're talking life as we know it, there are about 60 "words" in the entire language, and thus the complexity of life hinges on the length of the piece, in which case, the words code for proteins of varying sizes. -How intelligent can you be if you can only communicate yourself with 60 words? (and many of them mean the same thing?) In human terms we'd either call you a 1 yr old or mentally challenged. Of course, this is looking at life as it is now, and not when it got started.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"