New Miscellany Parts 1 &:2: evolution, eco, intelligence. (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, May 03, 2025, 18:56 (16 hours, 9 minutes ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The four dinosaur-bird grand-dads went extinct, leaving behind four starts for birds. Yes or no?

dhw: No. It was the four sets of dinosaur mums and dads who were the 0.1% survivors from Chixculub and who produced descendants! The other 99.9% (or whatever figure) did not survive and did not produce descendants. The descendants diversified into hundreds of new species, over millions of years. Of course ancestors also die out. The same applies to our own. But the fact remains that there is no creature on earth that can produce descendants after it has gone extinct!!! So please stop pretending that your God had to design and cull the 99.9% because they were essential for the fulfilment of his sole purpose (to design us plus food), although only the 0.1% eventually led to us and our food, as you have agreed!!!

Agreed.

Zombification

dhw: […]If you insist that he designed every species and every strategy, what facet of his nature would you say is revealed by the invention of carnivorousness: the deliberate design of species which can only survive by killing and eating other life forms?

DAVID: Unfortunately all life needs constant new energy input. And new survival strategies.

dhw: “Unfortunately”? Do you really think your omnipotent, omniscient God was incapable of inventing sources of energy that would not require the sheer brutality of killing and eating fellow organisms? You even have killers and prey waiting for him to give them instructions! You just can’t conceive of the possibility that they themselves might have devised their own means of attack and defence.

Animals need to eat. Not all of them will just graze. God allowed dog-eat-dog.

Mind and cosmos

QUOTE: “Eventually, I came to believe that intelligence is not a byproduct of the brain, but a fundamental property of the universe—a kind of informational ether that certain structures, like the brain or an AI model, can tap into.'” (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: In NDE's the consciousness appears to be separate from the brain.

dhw: You keep repeating this, and I keep agreeing. But I am pointing out that this does not normally entail the theory we are discussing, which is that consciousness exists as a fundamental property of the universe, as opposed to the individual consciousness apparently displayed during NDEs.

DAVID: […] van Lommel thinks the brain receives consciousness! We are left with evidence of a functioning consciousness while the brain is inoperative!

dhw: For the fourth time, I’m not disputing the evidence of NDEs! I’m pointing out that the vast majority of them do not link up with the notion of consciousness as a fundamental property of the universe, and I have no idea what is meant by the brain “tapping into” a property outside itself. Perhaps you could explain the latter to me. What did you “tap into” when you dreamt up your theory that your inefficient God had to design and cull 99.9 species irrelevant to his one and only purpose?

We have no answer to the issue of consciousness with a non-functioning brain. We know it seems separate.

Theoretical origin of life

DAVID: Life has arrived, mechanism unknown, and it uses methanogenesis for energy. All confined to the Archaea. Philosophically, it must be conceded the universe arrived seeking, expecting life to appear.

dhw: This all boils down to the point that the first forms of life must have been single cells that could use the conditions that existed at the time. The researchers have picked out the “the oldest known form” of energy. That’s it. No explanation as to how the existing conditions enabled cells to reproduce, adapt, innovate etc. I’m surprised that your God has now given way to a personified universe which arrived “seeking, expecting life to appear”, as opposed to creating it. Once again, the only place in the entire universe where we know life appeared is Planet Earth. So what was the rest of the universe thinking to itself when it arrived? “Why the hell hasn’t life appeared everywhere else inside me?” And just in case you really mean that it WAS your God who made the universe and created the first cells, the usual question arises: why create all the billions of galaxies extant and extinct if he only wanted one.

No one knows why the universe is so huge.