Natures wonders: seabirds, ants and viruses (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 22, 2020, 11:43 (1674 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Does trial and error require intelligent analysis?

dhw: My point was that “birds try things out, learn from their mistakes, and eventually in this case come up with a highly intelligent solution.”

DAVID: Still requires an intelligent analysis, which birds may not be able to perform. It may simply be "we're eating so we'll keep flying this pattern" into which they stumbled.

Yes, it requires intelligence, as you agreed before realizing that “might well be trial and error” meant they were intelligent. Now it’s “may not be able….” And “may simply be”. Why are you so terrified of the idea that other life forms might have their own degrees of intelligence?

DAVID (under “Ant intelligence”): The information is monkey-see-monkey-do. Ants have eyes and join the others in an activity.

dhw: Which activity, since they are confronted with a choice, and why do they communicate with one another if they have nothing to “say”?

DAVID: They communicate to understand the activity required.

dhw: And obviously to decide which of these activities they would perform. Thank you. Communicating, understanding and deciding are characteristics most of us would associate with intelligence.

DAVID: They simply see what others are doing and imitate. Not much for real intelligent thinking.

There are different tasks, choices must be made, they communicate, and then perform one of the tasks. Why is this intelligence not “real”?

DAVID: […] They are organized for each specified task. Ant colonies do not reorganize. Just do what they have to do: automatically build bridges when needed,

Why the passive? Who organizes them? They organize themselves! If ants change the tasks they perform, they reorganize. They do what they have to do after first ascertaining what it is they have to do. “Automatically” does not explain how the bridge strategy first arose. Do you think your God programmed it 3.8 billion years ago, or did a dabble and gave them lessons in bridge-building?

DAVID: You have me at a disadvantage. I can't go back to a specific debate to see context, which you always leave out.

dhw: There is no other context. I have you at a disadvantage because you keep changing your mind when I probe.

DAVID: It seems I constantly restate what you misinterpret.

The discussion last week arose from Plasmodium falciparum and blackwater fever. I remembered you saying that your God designed these things to test us, and you confirmed that my memory was correct. There is no misinterpretation.

DAVID: We've established God used viruses to guide evolution. We know viruses continue to evolve as we fight some of them. God must have allowed this degree of freedom. My impression, as before, is God allowed this to happen, and I cannot guess as to His reasons, but our big brain surely helps.

dhw: Good. You now have your God allowing things to happen instead of exercising full control - your usual mantra.

DAVID: Why do you insist my God must be absolutely inflexible/rigid in everything He does?

It is you who are rigid in your belief that he exercises total control over everything! I am the one who is pushing the theory that he “allows” things to happen instead of pulling all the strings.

dhw: I don’t know how this fits in with your statement that he directly designed the viruses, and I don’t know how “I cannot guess” fits in with your statement that he did so in order to test us. Your views appear to change day by day.

DAVID: I've not changed. You've made your usual stretches. God must have allowed viruses to mutate on their own, which is what we see, or as you suggest, He might be driving the changes. So we come back to debating about God's personality. I suspect He is nicer than that.

Now, instead of directly designing the virus, as he did last week, we have God allowing viruses to do their own thing, just as he allows us humans to do our own thing. So let’s drop the mantra that he is in total control of everything, and acknowledge that he is willing to sacrifice control. The debate about his personality relates to his motives, which according to you must stop at the point of wanting to design H. sapiens. Anything else is “humanizing”, although – more of your unequivocal statements you wish you hadn’t made – he may well think like us and probably/possibly has thought patterns, emotions and attributes similar to ours.

dhw: My point was to show how close you are coming to the concept of your God creating a spectacle for himself to watch with interest:

dhw: I don’t have a problem with your God deliberately creating “errors” – your word, not mine - in order to see how we cope. He may also have set problems for other life forms with lesser brains to solve […] I agree with you: a cushy, problem-free existence of puppets on strings would be deadly boring for us, and also deadly boring for a watching puppet-maker even before we arrived on the scene.

DAVID: All depends on your clear view of God.

Nobody has a clear view of God, who may not even exist, but I’m pleased to see how very close you are coming to accepting the idea of a God who watches with interest a spectacle he created for himself to watch with interest.