Human Intelligence

I feel comfortable concluding that it's the result of language, actually.

I think we all can agree that a specific mutation is accidental - say, the change of a base from T to A - but that mutations in general are inevitable.The direction that evolution takes is accidental, yes. That evolution will take a direction is guaranteed. I think that's all we're trying to say, maybe.

I think you're stuck on this accident/purpose dichotomy, which doesn't seem like a useful way of looking at the world.Let's say you enter the lottery, you among 1 million other people. There's exactly one million tickets, and one that wins. There's a ticket for everybody that enters, and one person for every possible ticket.As it happens, you win. Congratulations. Now, given that somebody was guaranteed to win, does it make it an "accident" that you won? "Accident" makes it sound unlikely. And it is unlikely that you of all people wouldwin. But it was guaranteed that somebody would win.Life is the same way. Some kind of life is inevitable, given a universe that supports sufficiently complex chemistry and enough time. That the course of life on this Earth took the path it did is astronomically unlikely, yes. Yet, life has to take some path.I don't see "accident" as anything but a meaningless, and possibly misleading, descriptor of this phenomenon. I think other people agree, and that's why you're having a tough time getting a straight answer - nobody thinks "accident" is a good word to describe what happened, and nobody thinks "purpose" is a good word to describe it either.

Hey, I'm with you. I hate to see arguments degenerate into what words mean. But it takes co-operation from both sides to prevent that.That's why I'd suggest you stop using the term "accident". It doesn't have a meaning relevant to what we're talking about. The fact that you continue to use it suggests that it's you who's about to embark on an argument from semantics, and quite frankly, none of us want to play that game. That's not what "accident" means in any context. Accidents don'thappen because of a lack of intelligent action. Accidents happen in spite of intelligent action.Now who's arguing from semantics? You, that's who. Because life is just a kind of chemistry. And chemistry is simply the interactions between matter. Given enough time, every potential chemical reaction that can occur will occur - including the specific chemical reactions that are the precursors to life.Google up the "gambler's paradox" or "the random walk." These are mathematical analogies that explain why, given enough time, everything that could happen does happen. Because life is a finite state of matter. And given enough time, all possible finite states of matter will come into existence.It doesn't surprise me at all that there was probably no life in the universe for almost 12 billion years. Just stop for a minute and think how long that is. It doesn't surprise me that for most of the one billion year history of life, life was a blue-green scum on a pond of dirty water.If you want to argue that wet rocks can'tever give rise to life, that's one thing. I don't understand what training in biochemistry will allow you to make that statement.On the other hand, if you're only going to argue that there's a very small but non-zero probability that wet rocks give rise to life, then that's tantamount to admitting that I'm right - because given sufficient time, all things that can occur will occur. It's mathematical fact.

Fallacy of false dichotomy. Just because the laws of physical chemistry don't intend to give rise to life doesn't mean that they're insufficient to give rise to life.Surely somebody so intent on avoiding semantics games should know better than to invoke well-known logical fallacies.Does water intend to take on a certain crystal shape? Do snowflakes therefore require intelligent intervention to form?

Ah, but what it is is an extremely complex arrangement of matter. So don't dodge the question. You claim that you can't have complex arrangement without intelligence. So does God sit down and design every snowflake by hand? The simplest cell that is alive today, yes. Nobody's suggesting such a cell just sprung into being. Unless the cell creates some kind of mineral deposit, it's not ever going to fossilize. You've hit on the biggest problem in origin of life research. Yeah, I still am, because you committed the fallacy of false alternatives. Tu coque is another fallacy. Plus you've dodged a question. So, that's three marks against you so far.For somebody who calls himself "skeptick" you might endeavor to aquaint yourself with the basics of informal logic.

I did. You are.The minute you started saying "accident", we explained to you that that wasn't a term that was applicable.What was your response? You continued to use the term. A reasonable person, eager to avoid semantics debates, would have opted for a different term - "undirected", "without guiding intent", etc. - that everybody could agree on. That's the mature response.What you did was persist in your game. You insist that we use your terms, because of course they're stacked in your favor. You've loaded the question in such a way that, no matter what we answer, you win. Much like "have you stopped beating your wife yet?"The only correct answer is not to answer, which is what we did. I tried to do the mature thing - explain to you how your terms were loaded and in error - but you're so keen to play your games that you spat it back in my face. You've stopped? That's news to me. You were defending its use in the post that I replied to before.If you're really done with "accident", then the discussion can move on. But I find it disingenuous at best that you accuse us of playing semantics games when it appears that's what you've been doing from the get-go. Nonetheless I'm willing to drop it if you are.Is the life we see the result of purposeless, natural cause? Yes. Does that answer your question? I'll say it again - there is no purpose that has guided the course of evolution on Earth.

Maybe I should have stressed its importance. My bad. Maybe you didn't recognize it as a rhetorical technique called "reducto ad absurdum" where you take your opponents argument to its most absurd logical extreme. God having to design every snowflake is the absurd logical extreme of the argument "intelligence is the only source of complexity." Sure. and you know what? I can't prove that God didn't design the universe 13 billion years ago with initial conditions in such a way as to guarantee that life would arise 9 billion years ago, kind of like the ultimate trick billiards shot. I can't prove that what we see today wasn't God's plan all along. I don't believe it, but I can't prove that it didn't happen.What I can prove isn't necessary is any kind of divine intervention 6,000 years ago to result in the formation of the diversity of life that we see today. Evolution and the historical cosmological model are compatible with theism, especially with a kind of theism called Deism. Evolution and the Big Bang aren't proof of atheism. You'll have to show me where I concluded "after this, therefore because of this" or else I'll have to conclude you don't understand the fallacies of informal logic. Nice try, though. It's not yet apparent you understand what the logical fallacies are, yet. You've committed several and erroneously accused me of two more. True. My bad. Instead of God, feel free to substitute any designer you feel capable of designing life.

Oh, I know I can't. The thing is, you can't explain anything in supernatural terms.The minute you've allowed "God did it" as a valid explanation, you've stopped the advancement of science dead in it's tracks, because "God did it" explains literally any phenomenon whatsoever. There's nothing "God did it" can't explain, and as a result, it truly explains nothing.I would think that a guy who calls himself "Skeptick" would know better than to invoke the Argument from The God of the Gaps. I'm not clear by what authority you make pronouncements about what nature is and isn't capable of. No, it just draws into sharp relief that fact that you don't know what you're talking about: See? Why wouldn't I admit to using a time-honored, valid rhetorical technique? What ad hominem attack? Exactly what do you think I called you? Apparently. If I had leveled an ad hominem against you, you'd know. Trust me.

Out of arguments? Looks to me like you're out of rebuttals. Here are the points that you've failed to rebut, in order of recentness:1) "God did it" is useless as an explanatory framework, while science provides useful answers and makes accurate, testable predictions.2) Complexity cannot be used as an indication of intelligent design unless intelligent design is to be taken as the source of all complexity. (This would be the reducto ad absurdum that you claim "crumbled" - rather, it is you who seem to have abandoned any attempt to rebut it.)3) The complexity of the cell is not a rebuttal of evolution, because evolution does not propose full cells springing into being.4) "Accident" is not the appropriate term to refer to any natural, biological phenomenon, and a demand that one choose between "accident and intent" is to commit the fallacy of false alternatives.5) You've accused me of practically every logical fallacy in the book, while remaining obviously and laughably ignorant of what those fallacies mean, as evidenced by your total inability to actually substantiate your accusals.I'm hardly out of arguments. I have infinite patience when it comes to rebutting nonsense. It's pretty clear, however, that we've exceeded your ability to keep up, so there's no shame in your attempt to drop out here. What is shameful is the lack of intellectual honesty that prompts you to wave a flag of victory while yourship sinks around you. Cheeky, but laughably transparent.

I thought I explained this. Maybe it was in another thread. Ok, here goes again:Life is a finite state of matter. Given enough time, all finite states of matter will eventually be formed, if things are getting stirred up (that is, there's something randomizing the matter,like, say, heat.) It takes time, but it's guaranteed if you can wait long enough.Google for such mathematical analogies as "the gambler's paradox" or "the drunken walk" to see how this is so.

I wasn't going to reply to this, because I don't want the last word - but I don't want to look like I don't respond to points, either. So I'll address this: I looked back and this is what I found:

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No, he doesn't design each and every snowflake by hand, but he did design water (we're speaking now in layman's terms to stay simple) to do what it does when it reaches a certain temperature.

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In which you make it clear that you believed that God designed water with the emergent property of forming snowflakes under certain conditions.So, you answer another of your own questions: why is life inevitable? From both of our perspectives, it's because life is an emergent property of chemistry. Why is it that way? From your perspective, it's because God designed it that way. From mine, I don't know. It's not really a scientific question.Either way, this is not a "rebuttal that I let die." Your rebuttal was the entire reason we're talking about God now. But it's also a rebuttal of the idea that God had to specially create life 6,000 years ago.You basically walked into my set-up, in other words. You can't use complexity as an argument for the necessity of special creation because God could have set up life as an emergent property of chemistry, just as he set up snowflakes as an emergent property of water.Cool. I'm glad we're on the same page, finally.

If I may pose the question, what do you think human conciousness is? When do we gain it? (Are we born with it?)Would it change your mind to learn than human and chimpanzee babies experiences roughly identical skill progression right up to age 3, when the human baby begins to learn language?What's the fundamental difference between them and us? I mean, I may be able to run better than you but that's not proof that I'm the only one with legs.

But how? That's the question I'm asking. What can we do that, fundamentally, the chimps are unable to do? Circular argument. You've answered the question "what's the difference between the consciousness of humans and apes?" with "consciousness."Right, now we're back to the beginning. What is consciousness? Because it's even cheaper to replace them with robots? So what the hell is it? Right, they're not human, and they can't talk. I think we covered that a while ago. You still haven't answered the question. To the contrary, it seems pretty simple to me - there's a level of maturity and experience required to have a reasonable expectation of understanding the consequences of actions. You'll notice that, despite your "age of accountability", there are some people that, no matter how old, are not accountable to their actions - the insane, or the developmentally disabled. Not a big mystery to me, I guess.We're free to debate consciousness forever, probably, but I don't think you (or anybody) can use the existence of human consciousness as an argument against evolution if you can't even explain what human consciousness is. I guess that's the point I've been trying to make.

Well, that's not really what I'm doing. I'm only quoting parts of your messages because to quote the whole thing would quadruple the length of my posts, and there's no reason to waste the server space when any interested party can just go backwards in the thread to see your whole message. It's rather impossible to take you out of context when your original message is one or two clicks away. Rest assured I'm reading your whole messages. (Lengthy analogy understood.)That's not why I'm questioning the existence of a distinctly human conciousness. I'm questioning it because it sounds too much like "reification", a kind of error where an abstract quality is taken as concrete. For instance, many people reify IQ, assuming that there's a specific biological, deterministic basis to somebody's IQ, when in fact no such basis exists - IQ is merely an abstract scale that measures your ability to take certain kinds of tests.Human consciousness may be a useful term in describing a number of behaviors that seem uniquely human. But I notice that you're having considerable difficulty explaining to me exactly what observable behaviors human consciousness gives rise to that are unique to humans. No, I'm saying that since all the differences I'm aware of are merely differences of degree, there's no difference that my "spreadsheet" can't account for. It's therefore incumbent on you to provide examples of human behaviors that are fundamentally different from any animal behavior. I'm still waiting for you to do that. To the contrary - I'm asking you to describe a behavior that I can't account for evolutionarily or culturally, and that could only be explained by the presence of the soul or spirit that you say exists. Of course, this has to be a behavior that we can readily observe, so we can both agree that it actually occurs. Oh, is it? Sounds like the same thing to me. Of course it's impossible to know exactly what your housecat thinks it's doing to the mouse, since cats don't exactly talk about their motivations.That's why we're talking about behaviors - behavior is objective. I disagree. Clearly this behavior is cultural. Many cultures took enjoyment from cruel bloodsports involving animals. Many cultures in the past saw other cultures as mere animals. Yet their decendants, as a result of cultural change, no longer enjoy these sports. Clearly enjoying the cruel torture of another human being is something you can learn to do. What you've given me is reasoning incompatible with any kind of objective experience. If evolution is really false - really, objectively false - you should be able to do better than this.