New Miscellany 1 & 2: evolution, intelligence, feet, brains (General)

by dhw, Thursday, June 05, 2025, 09:44 (1 day, 9 hours, 50 min. ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You go on prattling about how God does evolution all wrong by culling 99.9%. But that is exactly what evolution does. God started with bacteria, still usefully here, and eventually produced humans, quite an accomplishment. And you deride it.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! It is YOU who go on prattling about God’s inefficiency, because YOU propose that he specially designed 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with what YOU claim was his only purpose (which he could have achieved by creating us plus food “de novo”) and that is why he had to cull them. I do not deride anything except your theory, which ridicules its omniscient, omnipotent God’s inefficiency for a process you insist he must have followed, even though you yourself have no idea why he would have acted so illogically.

DAVID: The issue is God used evolution a cumberome method. His choice!

Yet again: The issue – assuming God exists – is that you make him invent a form of evolution that makes no sense if his purpose was the one you have invented for him. It is YOUR choice of purpose and method that makes him inefficient. I have offered you theistic alternatives, which you dismiss on the grounds that they entail thought patterns like our own, although you agree that he may have thought patterns like our own and even suggest some yourself.

Animal intelligence: the opossum

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.

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

dhw: 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”?

Not answered. Meanwhile, you agree that ants and crows are intelligent enough to solve complex problems, and the resin insect MAY be intelligent enough too, but the opossum’a very simple trick guided by experience could only be devised by a supreme divine intelligence!

Our special feet

DAVID: God gave us migrating feet. Another example of your anti-exceptionalism prejudice.
And:
DAVID: Under your scheme why migrate if your feet don't feel like doing it?

dhw: There is no “anti-exceptionalism”. I am not denying that our feet are different from other animals’ feet! […] It is perfectly possible to walk on non-human feet, as you may have noticed when you take your dog for walkies. […] 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. […] 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.

DAVID: Why do you think God is in charge? He handles issues in advance.

Why do YOU think God is in charge? I keep suggesting that he may have created a mechanism which put cell communities in charge of their own modes of survival (though he could intervene if he wished). Such an endlessly changing and fascinating free-for-all would explain why 99.9% disappeared as the mechanism eventually failed to cope with changing conditions, as he knew it would. It’s just a theory, but it fits the history, and removes all your nonsensical self-contradictions as well as your insulting references to your perfect God’s imperfection.

DAVID: Your thinking is primarily atheistic as it comes across.

Proposals that your God might have wanted a free-for-all, or might have enjoyed making new discoveries, or experimented to fulfil a purpose, are all “primarily atheistic” are they? Will you please stop trying to defend your nonsensical theory by pretending that my alternative theistic theories are atheistic!

Brain energy and cellular intelligence

QUOTE: Much of that signal is from the default mode network, which operates while we’re resting or otherwise not engaged in apparent activity[…] Additionally, beneath the iceberg of awareness, our brains are keeping track of the mosaic of physical variables — body temperature, blood glucose level, heart rate, respiration, and so on — that must remain stable, in a state known as homeostasis, to keep us alive. If any of them stray too far, things can get bad pretty quickly.

And then other cells try to correct whatever faults may have caused these to “stray too far”. We seem to have a community of cell communities operating at different levels of awareness, but all constantly sending messages, absorbing and exchanging information, monitoring and adjusting… The same would apply to all our fellow animals, but clearly our own brains can operate at higher levels than theirs, since we have additional layers of awareness.