New Miscellany 1: evolution, insects, intelligence (General)

by David Turell , Tuesday, May 20, 2025, 19:52 (7 hours, 20 minutes ago) @ dhw

The smelly hoatzin

DAVID: My thoughts about the past are based on real facts and are not negated by guesses about the future.

dhw: The only “real facts” are that there is life on Earth, it began with simple forms, and gradually more complex forms emerged, including humans, who are the latest species. It is not a “real fact” that there is a God, that if there is a God, his sole purpose was to design humans plus food, that he directly designed every single species, that he had to cull 99.9% of them because they were irrelevant to that purpose, and that he is a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer. Nor is it a fact that a billion years from now there will be no new species, which will prove that your non-factual God’s non-factual purpose was us and our food. Please stop pretending that your illogical theory of evolution is based on facts.

Our current knowledge is we do not know how speciation happens, that it is not happening now and we are the most advanced form it created. It all looks designed. From those facts I conclude there is a designer I call God. Your contorted view of evolution is again displayed. All evolutionary processes cull less advanced forms.

Animal minds: Insect tool use

DAVID: Testing the insects proves the point.

dhw: Of course. And on Thursday you accepted insect intelligence, but on Friday you did not.
Which is it this week?

Repeat: test to see how much intelligence is present.

Mind and cosmos leading to cellular intelligence

DAVID: Reiterating your usual mantra as above. All evolutions have loss of forms as part of the natural culling process. You must have forgotten this point.

dhw: We only know of one evolution of life on Earth, and you have forgotten that according to you, there was no “natural culling process” because a) your God is/was in total control of it, b) his sole purpose was to design us plus food, and c) he designed and had to cull the 99.9%, which is why d) you ridicule his inefficiency. When will you stop dodging?

DAVID: Stop it. There are many evolutionary processes we can study. All show culling. You keep trying to sell your nutty distorted view of God's evolution of humans.

dhw: We do not know of any other evolutionary process that entails a hypothetical, omnipotent, omniscient, sourceless mind designing living cells that not only reproduce themselves but can also evolve into ever more complex communities (= organs and organisms). I am not trying to sell any view when I point out that your own view of this being ridicules him as messy, cumbersome and inefficient because according to you he deliberately creates and then culls 99.9 out of 100 species that have no connection with the purpose you impose on him, even though you believe this omnipotent, omniscient being to be perfectly capable of designing anything he wants “de novo”! Stop dodging.

We have the Cambrian gap to exhibit de novo creation and we have an evolutionary process there after. We can recognize Cambrian descendants in today's organisms. Of course there was culling with or without a God. Our difference is I see the need for a designing mind I label as God. You see a directionless process that produced us, a senseless view.