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

by dhw, Sunday, May 04, 2025, 12:21 (9 hours, 9 minutes ago) @ David Turell

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!!!bbb 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!!!

DAVID: Agreed.

Sigh of relief. I’d better keep a record of this agreement, though, as it’s happened before, and just like 99.9% of species, it can suddenly become extinct!

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: Animals need to eat. Not all of them will just graze.

Yes and yes.

DAVID: God allowed dog-eat-dog.

“Allowed”? If he created the whole system, the only way he could have “allowed” dog-eat-dog would be by creating a free-for-all and endowing the organisms (cell communities) with the intelligence to work out their own methods of survival. You are dragging yourself slowly but surely toward acceptance of Shapiro’s theory.

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

For the fifth time, the article is not about NDEs (in which consciousness generally remains individualized) but about the concept of intelligence as a fundamental property of the universe which we can “tap into”. I have asked if you understand this concept, but I can only assume that you find it as incomprehensible as I do.

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.

DAVID: No one knows why the universe is so huge.

This is your problem, because you insist that there has to be a reason, and your reason is that there is a God who created it for the sole purpose of creating little old you and me and our food. It is your reasoning that plunges you into a whole set of contradictions. The atheist view would be that there is no purpose at all. What is here is here, but it is interesting to find it how it happened. There is no why. From an agnostic standpoint, the latter is perfectly feasible, but the complexity of life itself suggests design, in which case any speculation concerning the designer’s motives should at least make sense against the background of life’s history, as you have agreed at the start of this post.

Whale’s contribution to nutrition

QUOTE: The contribution that these animals will make to solving our climate crisis through stimulating photosynthesis is under debate and their ability to balance the global carbon budget in the face of human-related emissions may be negligible.

DAVID: whale contributions from poop to pee to dead carcasses vitally support ocean life. All species make their contributions in many ways.

Thank you as always for this illuminating insight into Nature’s wonders. I’ve singled out the quote, because it’s so very relevant to the whole problem of human interference destroying the balance of nature. How ironic, that the most intelligent beings on the planet should be using their expertise to destroy the planet and themselves!