New Miscellany 2: animal intelligence, human feet, the quest (General)

by David Turell , Wednesday, June 04, 2025, 18:47 (2 days ago) @ dhw

Intelligent cuttlefish

DAVID: Only dead opossums would leave a clue as to how to stay alive by pretending death. Really!?

dhw: Pete the opossum sees Willy the Wolf approach a dead opossum, have a sniff, and then walk away. One day he sees Willy before Willy sees him, and he remembers the incident, realizes he’s too slow to get away if Willy sees him, and hopes that playing dead might save him. It does. And then he tells all his mates. Do you think this is less credible than God saying to himself: “I must teach opossums to play dead, because otherwise wolves might kill them and eat them, and I really need them to survive so that humans can kill them and eat them”?

Way too much conceptualization for a opossum. Works in your brain.

Our special feet

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Under your scheme why migrate if your feet don't feel like doing it?

dhw: It is perfectly possible to walk on non-human feet, as you may have noticed when you take your dog for walkies. Many animals can trek for miles in their search for food. My point is that walking on two legs would create different pressures on the feet, and the cells would adapt accordingly. In other words, we didn’t migrate because we had well adapted feet: our feet adapted to the demands made by migration. Under your scheme, God operates on the feet and then tells humans to go walkies, just as he operates on pre-whales’ legs to turn them into flippers, and tells them they go and have a swim. Same old story: you can’t bear the thought that cell communities may adapt and even innovate IN RESPONSE to new conditions. Your God always has to preprogramme or dabble every change in advance.

Why do yo think God is in charge? He handles issues in advance.

XXXX

dhw: I trust that from now on you will stop distorting my quest for answers to all the mysteries as some kind of atheism. But I do remain profoundly grateful to you for remaining with me during this long quest, and for all the educational articles you keep providing.

Your thinking is primarily atheistic as it comes across.