> DAVID: NDE's are a form of proof that consciousness is universal. That is how the brain can formulate NDE stories while totally non-functional.
> 
> dhw: Or perhaps they are proof that energy as processed by the brain survives the death of the brain and brings human consciousness into the energy that first gave rise to life on Earth. Otherwise, how would the ND-experiencer preserve his/her identity? It's interesting that ND-ers see certain people from their own world. That = individual and intersubjective consciousness, but NOT universal consciousness.-I don't think we have to go as far back as the energy of first cause unless you will agree that the UI is the same thing as first cause. The NDE'rs keep an intact module of their own consciousness during the episode, that is obvious, but they might very well be using a portion of the energy of the UI in doing that. All quantum activity is interconnected. The only proble with all this theorizing is we do not know what consciousness is. Wwe only know what we experience, not its foundation.

The eyes have it. Genetic traces of opsin production show the descent pattern.First opsin without function, then functional. then all sorts of eyes:
> 
> 
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204840504578086700901693588.html?mod=WSJ_... descent is also proven by convergence, which shows the inventiveness of DNA. Here a common insect and mammels have very similar hearing mechanisms. Our eeys are very like squid eyes.:-http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6109/968.abstract


> dhw: That is the analogy I am drawing: first-cause energy may have been intelligent (as Nature is), and through aeons of its intelligent material combinations has gradually increased intelligence to consciousness and then to self-consciousness. -That statement is pure materialism through and through. Nature is not intelligent ipso facto. Inorganic material has no intelligence. Intelligence comes only with life.
> 
> dhw: And here is another possibility, raised by NDEs: that once our material self reverts to the energy from which it originally sprang, perhaps our human attributes will bring new dimensions to that original energy. Who knows?-NDE's are a form of proof that consciousness is universal. That is how the brain can formulate NDE stories while totally non-functional.

dhw: For the record, my fourth option would be intelligent but unself-conscious energy creating the mechanism for intelligent but unself-conscious life and evolution, culminating in an ever more complex intelligence that eventually becomes aware of itself.-Where does intelligence come from? Only an intelligent first cause. I don't know why that IFC isn't self-aware. You are splitting conscious and consciousness, and it seems to me only consciousness has the planning ability necessary to create the universe, life, us, etc., as reality today appears to make that point. Compare our productivity compared to apes.

dhw: 1) He then left it to evolve randomly in whatever directions. This flexibility resulted in billions of different species, some of which died out, some of which have survived. Eventually we evolved from one particular line of these randomly evolved species.
> 2) He occasionally interfered in order to push evolution in the particular direction he wanted it to go, i.e. towards humanity.
> 3) He did not have any particular plan in mind, but occasionally interfered in order to experiment.
> 
> These scenarios all fit in with the course of evolution as we (think we) know it, but only (2) involves a particular goal, and even that entails failures in the initial programme. Your "guided the creation of life" is too vague for me. Do you stand by preprogramming for humans from the very beginning, or are you prepared to consider any of these three alternatives?-Certainly not (3). Perhaps (1) or (2), but I think evolution had initial guidelines to carry it along. The Cambrian might be a point where God stepped in. Again origin of life is a miracle, Cambrian may well be, and humans with consciousness are a miracle, as I view it.

dhw: Do you then believe that God preprogrammed every single evolutionary innovation, leading to every single species, into the first creatures with DNA?-God guided the creation of life. It is a miracle, and in so doing, set up DNA to ensure evolution arrived at us. Either that or the pattern of evolutionary development is the most extraordinary set of contingent coincidences ever conceived, the odds against which are infinitesimal.


> > dhw: You have consistently argued in favour of God pre-programming evolution, so let me see if I can pin you down. Since you believe in evolution, you believe that every living form is descended from earlier living forms (so exit (2)). -> 
> Me: I believe there is a yet-to-be-found complexity program in DNA that drives evolution to more complex forms.-Look at this finding! A gene from junk DNA pops up to be active in the brain!-http://phys.org/news/2012-11-brain-gene-edge-apes.html

dhw: 1) random mutations
> 2) God deliberately creating each new organ and organism separately
> 3) Organisms responding to new environmental conditions by inventing new forms
> 
> You have consistently argued in favour of God pre-programming evolution, so let me see if I can pin you down. Since you believe in evolution, you believe that every living form is descended from earlier living forms (so exit (2)). If you reject the idea that the cell communities that make up every organism exploited new conditions by inventing new forms, exactly which part of these organisms do you think God pre-programmed to turn eventually into humans ... via those essential but now dead diddywocks, dumblebucks and dinosaurs, since you say elsewhere "the species that came and went were preparation for the next step"?-I believe there is a yet-to-be-found complexity program in DNA that drives evolution to more complex forms.

[DHW] There is a slight misunderstanding here. The context of the discussion is the Cambrian Explosion, which you get onto in your next paragraph, and the question David and I are fighting over is how to explain the sudden surge in new organs and organisms. David appeared to be aligning himself with the Creationists in accepting the idea of what I called God's "hands-on creation", and the focus of my final remark ... which I should have made clear ... was on the fact that vast numbers of the species "created" then and also afterwards went extinct. It's therefore hard to see how they could have been essential to what David and you see as God's purpose (to create humans). I accept the rest of your argument.
> 
 
> And this is where the whole idea of purposeful Creation becomes too involved for me to find credible. If God was capable of building and fine-tuning a whole universe to sustain life, and if his purpose was to create humans, then was he NOT capable of controlling the climate? Why did billions of species have to come AND GO before he finally got to what he wanted? It's the same question I asked on the dodo thread long ago. If I did believe (but please remember that I don't disbelieve) in a creator, I would still suggest that the higgledy-piggledy comings and goings of evolution fit in more easily with a god who is experimenting than with one who is planning. You have focused on what has survived, as evidence of planning. I am focusing on what has not survived, as evidence of randomness. 
> -Ok, I have a slightly unique perspective from my studies in game design. As a game designer, generally speaking I don't create objects, creatures, or anything else for that matter. What I create is the rules that govern their behavior and the programmer creates the mechanisms that govern their existence in such away that it implements the rules that I have laid out. This is an important distinction because, as a designer, in most cases I do not create each and every individual. I create templates, rules, and mechanics that often play out in different and unique ways every single time the game is played. The fact that the game changes is not randomness, it is 100% designed and happens according to rules that are written in stone. -In a game, a million creatures can be created and destroyed without me having done anything to 'cause' it provided that their interactions are written in the rules. I believe God made the rules, designed the mechanics and started the game and handed the controller off to his creatures to play for themselves. -Not a great analogy, but I hope the point gets across

dhw: And this is where the whole idea of purposeful Creation becomes too involved for me to find credible. If God was capable of building and fine-tuning a whole universe to sustain life, and if his purpose was to create humans, then was he NOT capable of controlling the climate? Why did billions of species have to come AND GO before he finally got to what he wanted? -Tony's answer is perfectly reasonable. In regard to climate, since we like sunny days perhaps it should never rain. The species that came and went were preparation for the next step, as Tony explains. The universe was created by an explosion with the imposition of a group of physical laws to guide it from there. The universe in those terms was easy. Life is much more complex. Biochemistry requires an encyclopedia of information, the universe a primer. Not surprising God chose His approach.

DAVID: I'm a God-mind reader in the sense that I look at what we see in evolution, and acknowledging that chance doesn't work, logically consider other possibilities. The Cambrian was the result of what? More oxygen? Dangerous to work with. Epigenetics? Doesn't fit. Epgenetics is a response to specific environmental changes. We are back to oxygen. Therefore,either pre-programmed or a push by God. Now we are at the preferrence level of human thought. Since evolution of the universe and of life runs smoothly 99% of the time, I still favor pre-programming.
> 
> Sorry, but I can't quite follow this. I would have thought an increase in the amount of oxygen was a very specific environmental change, so why wouldn't epigenetics "fit"? However, I'm not plugging oxygen as the change. Nobody knows what the change was, but that doesn't limit the choice to pre-programming or Creationism! -The reason epigenetics doesn't fit is that epipgenetics, in the examples we see,is a response to a threat or danger, or to an environmental change. The effects on the animal body may be small but never as dramatic as inventing new forms of animals. The Cambrian is NOT epigenetic, is a super-genetic!