E. Coli vs. Linux (Humans)

by dhw, Friday, May 21, 2010, 12:24 (5109 days ago) @ David Turell

David is gallantly trying to push me off my picket fence.-DAVID: The afterlife expectation or conviction is based on the same kind of reasoning as the UI. How do all those NDEers find out the info they receive when there is no direct reality-based communication available?-I have used the same argument myself against those who have closed their minds. (Please remember that mine remains open.) However, if human consciousness is independent of the physical brain and survives its death, why is it that 82% of the 344 patients studied by Pim van Lommel had no NDE at all? Variations on a theme of Calvin?-DAVID: I don't know the designer 'cares' for us. That is religions' point of view.-My apologies. You have indeed made that clear before. I do, however, find it difficult to dissociate the concept of a guardian angel from that of a caring God, and I would find it even more difficult to care about a God who didn't care for me. -You have referred us to a website commentary that emphasizes the "software writing intelligence" required for the genetic code. This is an argument I already accept, but the article is well worth studying. Thank you. I was struck by the comment: "Data is passive, while the program is active. What is passive cannot create what is active." It occurred to me that one could rewrite that, substituting "natural selection" for "data", and "evolution" for "program". It's a constant source of irritation that experts like Dawkins so often use the two terms as if they were synonymous. However, in fairness to Darwin I do wish the author had not insisted that "Darwinian theory is incapable in principle of explaining the mystery of the origin of life and of species, as it claims to do." To a degree he's right about species, since the title does specify "by means of natural selection", but that doesn't invalidate the general principle of evolution through adaptation and mutation followed by natural selection. Furthermore, although Darwin speculated elsewhere on the origin of life, he went out of his way to emphasize that his theory did NOT claim to explain it.