New Miscellany 2: intelligence, feet, fossils, wishes (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 03, 2025, 11:43 (3 days ago) @ dhw

Ecosystems

Dealt with in Part 1.

Intelligent cuttlefish

dhw: You have already accepted that parrots, corvids, some insects and animals are intelligent, but you still deny the possibility that others may be intelligent too. Your God has to make all their decisions for them.

DAVID: No, animal intelligence is world wide.

dhw: But according to you, cuttlefish are not intelligent, and the resin-using insect needs to be tested, and the opossum needs a lecture from God on how to feign death, and we humans could not survive if God hadn’t designed them all and taught them what to do.

DAVID: It all depends on how deeply an animal can conceptualize. The authors, themselves, questioned the use of foraging experience helping the cuttlefish.

That did not invalidate the tests, which proved the cuttlefish’s ability to solve new problems, but also showed that some individuals are more intelligent than others. Nothing to do with “depth of conceptualization”. And you continue to demand tests for the resin insects, and to insist that your God had to teach the opossum to feign death.

Our special feet

DAVID: another aspect of our exceptionality. Mobility.

dhw: I really don’t think we are any more mobile than our four-footed friends, and I would suggest that it was not the shape of our feet that enabled us to tackle long-distance locomotion, but our desire to go further and further afield that gradually produced the changes described above. [I shan't repeat the whole argument here.]

DAVID: God gave us migrating feet. Another example of your anti-exceptionalism prejudice.

dhw: There is no “anti-exceptionalism”. I am not denying that our feet are different from other animals’ feet! I am offering an explanation of HOW those feet may have evolved BECAUSE we migrated and not in order to allow us to migrate.

Your only response to this argument was to repeat your own theory that your God designed our feet, presumably along with our legs and pelvises, BEFORE we left the trees.

dhw: To the above I would add that your talk of “improvement” in Part One is illustrated by this example. Improvements are the changes made to enable species to adapt more efficiently to their environment. Elephants are not an “improvement” on dinosaurs. But the changes to the human foot, like the changes to the pre-whale’s legs, are an improvement in the ability to cope with new conditions.

DAVID: Elephants are less dangerous than dinosaurs was my point.

A pointless point in the context of "improvement". Are tigers less “dangerous” than the vegetarian brontosaurus?

DAVID: How does guideless evolution produce such masterful designs? That is what you claim happened.

A complete non sequitur as you scurry back to the safe argument for design, since ALL these life forms are too complex to be the result of chance. And your introduction of the word “guideless” is yet another of your obfuscations, totally ignoring Shapiro’s theory that the masterful designs are the consequence of intelligent cells adapting and /or innovating in order to ensure or improve their chances of survival. To which I always add the theory that your God may have designed the first cells and their autonomous intelligence.

First land animals

DAVID: This finding satisfies dhw's wish for more fossil discoveries by filling a recognized gap in specimens. That is what is left to find, just specimens to fill recognized gaps in the fossil record. New, dramatic, theory changing discoveries are most unlikely.

Thank you once more for your integrity in providing more evidence against your own wished-for theories. Sadly, though, you have never understood my motive for writing the brief guide and setting up this website. Although I am fully aware that we will never know the answers to life’s mysteries unless there is a God who will explain them to us, I still want to examine all possible solutions. Unlike you, I do not “first choose a God I wish to believe in. The rest follows.” And so I do not try to twist what we know of reality so that it will fit in with my preconceptions. You tie yourself in knots with your theory concerning God’s purpose and method and ability to design species “de novo”, the latter being based on the gaps. I see a possible explanation of the gaps. You have kindly provided evidence that this explanation could be right. You keep telling us that new discoveries are unlikely, but researchers keep coming up with new discoveries. That’s all. I don’t wish for a particular truth, and I am 100% certain that in my few remaining years I have no chance of solving any of the mysteries, but that does not stop me from inquiring. However, I should add that it does not lessen my gratitude to you for continuing the quest with me and for providing so much educational material along the way.