Unanswered questions (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, May 30, 2019, 01:39 (2003 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I am proposing that instead of every undabbled response to every unpredictable, random change in the environment being preprogrammed, ALL organisms were equipped with a form of thinking, reasoning intelligence to enable them to cope with or exploit the changes (although eventually the vast majority of them could not think or reason intelligently enough to survive).

DAVID: You should rethink your statement I have bolded. I will boldly state that only humans have the power to reason:

dhw: Your bold statement is based on what I consider an absurdly inadequate definition of reason:
https://mindmatters.ai/2019/05/an-atheist-argues-against-reason/
"The accepted definition of reason is simple and straightforward: it is the power to think abstractly, without concrete particulars.”

dhw: Here is what I regard as a far more accurate definition: “the ability to think, understand and form judgments that are based on facts (Longman)”. Over and over again you have reproduced examples of organisms solving problems. Nobody would claim that their problem-solving, decision-making abilities can match those of humans, but that is not the point. Adapting to new conditions, hunting prey or evading predators, building safe and efficient habitats, solving problems – all these require “a form of thinking, reasoning intelligence”, and I boldly suggest that you should rethink your acceptance of an absurdly limited definition of “reason”.

DAVID: Nothing abstract in what you describe as your preferred definition. Abstract thinking IS the difference. My dog acts with purpose, which is what you are describing, but he cannot consider the underlying meaning of what he did.

dhw: We are not talking about the difference between humans and other organisms, but about the definition of “reason”! I do not accept that reason means the power to think abstractly. We ourselves use reason all the time to solve concrete problems, and so do our fellow animals. That is why I consider my definition to be correct and the definition as abstract thinking to be woefully inadequate.

You are correct: there is concrete reasoning of fact (as my dog) and abstract reasoning (as only in humans). I was only considering the abstract level, but need to be considered..

DAVID: Our difference is simple: I believe the complexities of living creatures evolved through God's design.

dhw: […] I’m sorry, but your “simple difference” is yet another attempt to ignore the fact that it is the combination of your hypotheses that doesn’t gel.

DAVID: What gels is accepting that God chose to run all of evolution purposely starting with the appearance of living organisms and eventually arrived at humans. It all revolves around Adler's argument that humans are different in kind.

dhw: Yes, if God exists, he chose to run evolution with living organisms, and eventually humans arrived, and humans are indeed different in kind from whales and monarch butterflies and weaverbirds. But none of that means that your always-in-control God personally designed every single life form, lifestyle, natural wonder and econiche in the history of the world, or that he did so in order to enable life forms to eat or not eat one another until he specially designed the only thing he wanted to design, which was H. sapiens. Please stop glossing over the incongruities through vague generalisations.

Your description of my thoughts show no incongruities. What is wrong with God running, in total control, evolution from the invention of life to the design of each form? That is how
I conceive of God's role.