Ralph:
>You seem to assume that "rational, intelligent choices" are invariably
>better than a chance event. Yes, people usually do have "what they
>consider intelligent reasons" for their actions--including panic stock
>selling,
>runs on banks and paying 7-foot basketball players millions of dollars.
Bertvan:
Hi Ralph, I can't believe you want to argue that chance is a better basis for
decisions than intelligence. In any case, I am merely suggesting that,
overall, intelligence would be more likely to produce rational, complex
organisms than chance.
Ralph:
>That symbiotic relationship that benefits only one of the organisms
>is often described as "parasitic" and it's frequently to the detriment of
>the other organism. But I'll bet the ID knew that, too.
Bertvan:
I'm merely suggesting symbiosis is not a chance event. Motivation is
involved.
Ralph:
>Yet if you go in and scramble some of a gene's DNA, that DNA will go right
>ahead and follow its scrambled code, regardless of the eventual result to
>the organism. Is this a sign of intelligence?
Bertvan:
Are you asking whether scrambled intelligence is still intelligence?
>>Bertvan:
>>These are not live organisms. For an understanding of how multicelled
>>organisms came into existence, we might study the slime mold. It can be
>>individual organisms pursuing their own interests or it can combine to
>>pursue
>>the interest of the whole. Can you declare with certainty no intelligence
is
>>required to know when to do each? If the parts are "forced" into such
>>cooperative behavior, what forces them? I don't think we know enough about
>>the process to say anything -- unless we already have a philosophical
>>prejudice against the existence of intelligence.
Ralph:
>Or *for* it. :) Bertvan, if you need "certainty" before you'll accept a
>explanation, science is going to be frustrating for you.
Bertvan:
The Darwinists are the ones who claim to know for certain that intelligence/
mind/motivation/free will/Teleology play no important part in natures
processes. As a result they have ended up with a theory that most people
don't find credible, but no one can think of an alternative. Nevertheless,
for some reason they feel compelled to impose this theory upon society as
"fact".
Ralph:
>I thought it was part of your definition of "materialist" that they consider
>all things to be part of the material world? In that case, how could a
>materialist justify calling anything "supernatural"?
Bertvan:
You'll have to ask a materialist. In the case of free will, I think they
insist it is an illusion.
Bertvan
http://members.aol.com/bertvan
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