New Miscellany Part 2: zombies, fine-tuning, symbiosis (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 23, 2025, 11:51 (3 days ago) @ dhw

Zombification

DAVID: Trial and error to create such a mechanism is not a logical route. The ants must learn to attach themselves and attack the host's brains. A two-step process in which the first step alone serves no purpose.

dhw: That makes them even cleverer than I had supposed. Do you believe your God preprogrammed this strategy 3.8 billion years ago, or suddenly decided that zombification would be a great help to us humans (his sole purpose) and popped in to give zombification courses to all his potential parasites.? Please answer.

Not answered.

DAVID: All part of a necessary ecosystem in God's design of life on Earth.

Necessary for what? According to your theory of evolution, we humans would not exist or at least would not have enough food to eat if he hadn’t preprogrammed or instructed certain life forms to zombify others. Now would you please answer my question. Do you believe the strategy was preprogrammed and/or divinely taught in zombification classes?

Possible alien life

DAVID: The factors involve the way this universe is made. This is a life friendly universe.

dhw: And the way the universe is made is such that the only place we know to be fine-tuned for life is Planet Earth. Your “friendly” obfuscation is trillions of miles away from telling us that the whole universe is finely tuned for life!

DAVID: Yes, the Earth is fine-tuned for life, but as the universe is life-friendly any life- welcoming area within it can have life.

All you’re saying is that any area that is fine-tuned for life can have life. That does not mean the whole universe is fine-tuned for life. Why are you dragging this out?

Plate tectonics join Asia and Africa

DAVID: contingent events strongly effected migrations and evolution. It is a two-way street: life transforms the Earth and a changing Earth transforms life.

dhw: It’s easy to see how a changing Earth affects life, but you’ve set me thinking about the reverse process. There’s no question that human life has transformed the Earth, as we discussed under “climate change” and human destruction of species. Microorganisms have changed as conditions have changed, and perhaps we can also say that the changes in microorganisms have in turn transformed the Earth. Is this what you mean? I’m not looking for a debate but just for information.

DAVID: Yes is the simple answer.

Thank you.

SYMBIOSIS

DAVID: You are always fussing about the darkness in some areas of the world. I have no control over happenings in Gaza, Ukraine or Sudan, so why should I fret? I do sympathize with the Ukraine people and their horrible history with Russia.

dhw: Sadly, this ties in with your attempts to brush aside the very existence of evil in your effort to ignore the problem of theodicy. I really can’t see why anyone should reject my proposal that peace is preferable to war, and my regret that humans so often opt for competition as opposed to symbiosis. I never imagined that this would lead to any sort of disagreement. I wasn’t asking you to go out on a crusade.

DAVID: But that is exactly what your rhetoric calls for.

dhw: It does no more than reiterate basic principles which would make for a better world, and these principles apply at every level of life, whether individual, social, political, national or international.

DAVID: All of us agree with you idealistically. Realistically, it is not what happens.

dhw: And that is the pity of it. One would have hoped that all our great leaders would have recognized this obvious truth!

DAVID: They are just humans following their own agendas.

I know. That’s what’s causing so much of the trouble.

Clever corvids

QUOTE: "Crows are the first non-human animals to demonstrate these abilities, which were once thought to be uniquely human.”

We always think of intelligence in terms of what matters to us, but many humans simply cannot conceive of the possibility that every living form, all the way down to single cells, must have some form of intelligence to enable it to survive.