More Denton: Reply to David (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, July 25, 2015, 02:09 (3200 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: You always seem to think that such statements mean “equating” other organisms with humans, but no one is saying that their intelligence, let alone their level of self-awareness, is the same as ours. However, their form of intelligence enables them to accomplish astonishing feats (Nature's Wonders) that may be unique to themselves and require “exquisite planning”. -Whoa! Please reread that sentence. You are granting them an intelligence instead of hypothesizing one? -> dhw:I simply don't accept your contention that weaverbirds, ants, plovers, spiders, monarch butterflies etc. are incapable of designing their own habitats and lifestyles. And if I am right, then their inventive intelligence may mirror that of all cells/cell communities.-Agreed if you are right.
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> dhw: “Natural assumptions” are sometimes another term for preconceptions. Why should your God not have given other organisms the ability to do their own exquisite planning (as above)?-He might have given them an IM, I've agreed.
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> dhw: When discussing cells, you always focus on the chemical processes that accompany the actions they perform, but these do not explain the decision-making process that leads to those actions.-Those decision-making processes can all be automatic biochemical reactions, just as our kidney cells decide the urine concentrations for the day.- 
> dhw: You had claimed that humans were “vastly more complex in physical and mental abilities”. ..... You have also missed the point of my Everest metaphor. Even if we humans are the most intelligent organisms on Earth, that does not mean your God's purpose in creating the universe was to produce us.-But in my view it can mean that.