The Intelligent Cell (Origins)

by David Turell , Thursday, December 15, 2011, 01:53 (4517 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You have arrived at my point of view, whether you realize it or not. My UI is what you are describing, 'as yet unknown to us'.

When I talk of “a form of intelligence as yet unknown to us”, it is the vaguest possible concept. Your Universal Intelligence comes with all kinds of attributes, even though you often deny that it has any. You frequently use the name “God”, you believe in a deliberate design with pre-planning, you see humans as the chosen species, the culmination of a divine project.

Of course the concept is vague. It can't be otherwise. You have arrived at my point of view whether you like that or not. Yes, I use the word 'God' because that is the word most people think of when we are discussing the 'greatest power'. One has to start in familiar territory to approach people who have not done much research or thinking about this.

You question my attempted characterizations of the UI. The idea of design with pre-planning is an educated guess, because I don't know how evolution, if it is not guided, as a natural very random process can create organisms of such complexity at the biochemical level. Yes, it is an argument from incredulity, because the results of life as created within the process of evolution is so miraculous.

And as for humans as a chosen species, we started with the chimps and bonobos with the same common ancestor. Each species could have advanced. Only we did. I can't answer whny but I think we will find the reason on some new mechanism in the genome. In 6 million years we grew a giant brain, when the other primate species have survived, unchanged, just fine. There is no known or demonstrated 'drive' in nature to cause this. Just remember the human phenotype became smaller and weaker than the common ancestor, as judging by the chimp phenotype. And to make up for the weakness, the giant brain appeared. I see nothing in the challenges of nature to cause this, but it happened.

So, you can see I have made educated guesses, but I recognize that I could be totally wrong about my attempts at characterizations.

You and I are at the same point. You are simply not willing to dig into the next step as I have done. I think you still contaminated by childhood religious teaching. I've cleared my mind of it. I'm not trying to create a religion, or find a 'God' as they have previously described. They all lead in the wrong direction by making God so personal. I think the human attributes given to God are wishful thinking by self-centered humans. I don't know how personal He is. Adler didn't know either at the time he wrote his book trying to prove God, although he ended up Catholic and therefore must have changed his mind.

Despite this I feel personally close to God. My own weakness, or is it intuitive at a consciousness level? I admit it feels good, which is not a scientifically or philosophically correct answer.