Explaining natural wonders (Animals)

by David Turell , Friday, September 23, 2016, 15:35 (2764 days ago) @ dhw

David's comment: There are many more examples, much like the ones I used in my second book, where I presented them as lifestyles provided by God. Read the whole article for amazing observations.
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> dhw: So if we follow your reasoning, God preprogrammed or personally taught the frillfin goby to form and remember cognitive maps so that life could go on until humans appeared. I will never understand why you cannot bear the thought that all these creatures may have the intelligence to work such things out for themselves.-As you yourself note God may have given them the intelligence, while I say God DID give them the intelligence in the form of onboard instructions.
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> dhw: Corvids
> QUOTE: “…what's unwarranted is the notion that the neocortex alone is responsible for sophisticated cognition. Because birds lack this structure—the most recently evolved portion of the mammalian brain, crucial to human intelligence—neuroscientists have largely and unfortunately neglected the neural basis of corvid intelligence.”
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> Further evidence of the general human prejudice that if other organisms are different from us, they can't be capable of "sophisticated cognition". -
I pointed out that their brains use a different set of neural networks, a form of evolutionary convergence,-
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> dhw: Trees
> QUOTE: “If It's the same for all plants, and that's why some scientists are skeptical and why many of them banish to the realm of fantasy the idea of plants' ability to learn.”
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> Understandable, but experiments have shown that trees and plants DO learn. And so do bacteria. Thus we have the typical situation in which scientists and others would prefer to ignore the evidence of experiments and first-hand observation and stick to their prejudices because they are convinced that intelligence requires a brain. -The way trees and plants react may be coded into their DNA by epigenetic or similar mechanisms, no brain needed.
 
> DAVID: I fully understand your point of view. I will stick with mine.
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> dhw: I'm glad you understand mine. Your own continues to change from day to day. You have admitted that cellular intelligence can exist so long as it was given by God. Will you now stop telling us that cells cannot be intelligent?-I've never said cells do not act intelligently. They do so by using intelligent instructions/information they contain. This point of mine has never varied. The appearance of intelligent action by cells can be primary to their actual intelligence or secondary to the instruction/information they carry. To the observer there is no apparent difference.