Geoffrey Simmons, author of The Adam Experiment, points out that many animals and even bacteria show behavior that seems like thinking:
Robert J. Marks: We have been talking about your book, and I wanted to talk some more about it. You have one chapter, “The Thinking Piece” and another one, “The Memory Piece.” And in there, you trace from one-cell organisms to humans. Can you kind of unpack that and give us some examples that highlight these capabilities?
Geoffrey Simmons: I’d be glad to. As I mentioned a little earlier on the previous podcast, we do see animals and all kinds of organisms having some ability that smacks of thinking. And indeed you can expose bacteria to something scary and a light or anything like that and then show that to their offspring, which are not offspring in the sense that we think of it, and they will go away from it.
Note: In his recent book, Miracle of the Cell (2020), biochemist Michael Denton notes that cells can do a variety of things without anything like a brain. For example, gut pest E coli is “adept at counting molecules of specific sugars, amino acids, or dipeptides… comparing counts taken over the recent and not so recent past” (p. 17). Bacteria, deprived of food, can solve problems that have stumped computers —again, without a brain. We don’t know how they do it.
Geoffrey Simmons: Now, is that thinking or what is that? … We see that with a lot of problem-solving, monkeys using tools, monkeys using mechanisms to get places like a stick for a cane or through water, getting across a creek, in other words, problem-solving, coming up with something novel to solve a problem.
News, “Why a Science fiction writer thinks life is more than just matter” at Mind Matters News
Nature is full of intelligence. The researcher who is looking for a world that does not show intelligent design is looking for a different planet.
See also: Part I: Should robots, instead of humans, go into space? They might be better at life in space than humans. But could they be counselors too? Geoffrey Simmons, a retired internist and science fiction author, discusses genuine health risks for humans from long term space travel with Robert J. Marks.
I am watching a spider making its web in complete awe. The amount of complexity required and the fact that obviously it is all right there in that tiny creature is absolutely mind-blowing!
A recent bit of research on insect vision finds that some insects use the polarization of light in parts of the sky as a ‘compass’ to check their current position and location. They store the parts of the map in a way that’s calibrated by azimuth and altitude, just like a human navigator using a sextant or transit. Try to imagine how that ability could have ‘evolved’.
http://polistrasmill.blogspot......sense.html
Is life more than just matter? Doesn’t that depend on what you mean by ‘matter’ and what you mean by ‘life’? We no longer think of matter as being made of tiny lumps of solid stuff and when you look at viruses, for example, are they living or not?. Besides, does it even matter? Obviously, at some level, living things are material but we have no compelling evidence of immaterial life. Without that we are left with the option that life, like consciousness, arises from matter.
Seversky:
Doesn’t that depend on what you mean by ‘compelling’? (c)
The true Scotsman fallacy.
There isn’t any evidence that life or consciousness arises from matter. There isn’t even a way to test the concept. So, according to Hitchens, we can dismiss it.
2 Seversky
How cute! It’s your materialist cult the one that worships “matter”, so it’s you who has to have a clear and non-contradictory definition of it.
Please share it with us, Seversky:
“Matter” is:
1. ___________
(Your negative to reply will count as you conceding that you don’t know the definition).
Materalism’s Epistemological Nightmare
Materialism’s Epistemological Blunder
Materialism’s Encroachment on Science
Materialism’s Evident Falsity
Yet Another Materialist Fiasco: No Substantial Forms
Materialism’s Unnoticed Achilles’ Heel
A virus is not a living organism because it doesn’t fit the definition. It cannot reproduce without a host that has the components required for reproduction. A virus doesn’t consume energy to survive. A virus cannot regulate its own temperature. And a virus is an acellular particle. It is NOT made up of a cell or cells.
ET: A virus is not a living organism because it doesn’t fit the definition. It cannot reproduce without a host that has the components required for reproduction. A virus doesn’t consume energy to survive. A virus cannot regulate its own temperature. And a virus is an acellular particle. It is NOT made up of a cell or cells.
It is tricky trying to decide where viruses fit into the ‘tree’ or bush of life. They’re more machines than alive it seems.
Where would you put them? Just curious. There is no right or wrong answer I think.
I find yeasts much more interesting: they don’t need a host to reproduce, they have mutations and change over time, they will probably continue on even if all other living forms cease.
3 Seversky
Hahaha! Only in your kindergarten materialist dreams. Your philosophical position is dead.
EugeneS/4
Yes, it does. I would like to see evidence of a conscious intelligence not closely correlated with a physical brain or some other material substrate. I would like to communicate with a consciousness that survives the death of the physical body (without going through some human intermediary). Is that too much to ask>
Not if I’m applying the same standards of evidence to all.
No, seversky. It is not too much to ask. And by the looks of television programs and youtube videos, there are plenty of people to contact who can set you up.
You will find more evidence for disembodied forces than you will for blind watchmaker evolution’s ability to create the diversity of life. Or you can just sit back and pretend that your willful ignorance is an argument.
10 Seversky
Lol. Certainly you are not. 🙂
We want evidence of how a “material” brain can create an “immaterial” mind (what you materialists call “magic”/ “emergence”).
And a clear, concise, non contradictory definition of “matter”.
We are waiting. (Your evasive tactics are quite boring).
1. __________
And while you are at it, how can your obsolete cult overcome the collapse of “direct realism” into “epistemological idealism”.
Those crickets are chirping.
___
Naturalism’s Epistemological Nightmare
But what do we mean by “arises”?
Oh, I know . . . a miracle occurs!
-Q
Seversky TF is right. A material, computational substrate cannot account for responsible, rational, significant, morally governed freedom. Such is a requisite of the very rationality you boast of in your argument by skeptical dismissal on demand for “evidence.” KF
PS: Where this goes . . . and it is directly relevant to desperately needed reformation:
Querius/13
What do we mean by miracle?
That aside, it seems to me that either consciousness emerges by some as-yet-unknown natural process or it was ‘magicked’ into existence by some advanced being using some, again, as-yet-unknown process. Either way, the fact is we don’t know yet.
But positing a god or some advanced alien is of no help. It just pushed the question back one stage. Where did this god/alien – or even alien god – get its intelligence? Is there an infinite regress of gods?
==Not if I’m applying the same standards of evidence to all.==
You don’t appear to. That is obviously just my impression. I don’t insist because I don’t have time or desire to prove that you apply double standards. From what I remember, I have the impression that some of your comments do seem to contain very superficial statements. It is as if their author had just consumed them from somewhere else without much critical thought.
Seversky
The infinite regress of gods problem arises only if God is a contingent entity.
Kairosfocus/14
I don’t think we’re in a position to say “cannot”. There is so much that is still weird and inexplicable – by us – about this Universe.
The Infinite Pattern That Never Repeats
17 EugeneS
True! Atheists are poor thinkers knocking down a straw-man argument.
If Everything Requires a Cause, What Caused God?
I’ll add to my earlier comment.
The ‘infinite regress of gods’ problem arises only if God is a contingent being, which He is not.
The problem of infinite explanatory regress exists in naturalism regardless of the question of God’s existence. Any explanation is incomplete and requires additional explanations ad infinitum.
This problem does not exist in theism for exactly the above reason: God is not contingent. God exists regardless of whether humans want it or not.
18 Seversky
Yes, by “us” (rational creatures).
We have an intellect to make use of it. Appeals to “magic” are childish and not helpful.
The argument against God is idiotic.
If God created space-time, that means that God created space and he created time. Duh. So before God created time, there would not have been a “before God.”
In the beginning (at the beginning of time), God created the heavens (space) and the earth (matter). The earth was formless and void (chaotic or at the highest state of entropy) and darkness was over the surface of the deep (“Before decoupling occurred, most of the photons in the universe were interacting with electrons and protons in the photon–baryon fluid. The universe was opaque or “foggy” as a result.” – Wikipedia).
Instead, some people say they don’t believe that God created the universe and that somehow the universe somehow “musta” created itself out of nothing! It simply came into existence. Ah, but they assert that there’s a great cosmic turtle named Multiverse that lays universe eggs. Plus, there are trillions of new universes that spontaneously generate every nanosecond from Nothing, which we call “the many worlds interpretation” (MWI) in quantum mechanics. And that Father Deep Time is infinite and thus can create anything through the miracle of Evolution. Even consciousness miraculously “emerges” from complexity—so, if we have consciousness, then this must also be an attribute of the universe that “musta” emerged at some point, somehow, scientifically.
Those people actually do believe in God, they just prefer calling him “Science.”
And when questioned, they ask us to define every word we use. So, having a conversation with them requires numerous quotes from a dictionary.
e·merge /??m?rj/
– move out of or away from something and come into view.
– become apparent, important, or prominent.
– (of facts or circumstances) become known.
-Q
Truthfreedom,
Thanks for the link. Interesting stuff!
EugeneS
My pleasure. 🙂 Hope you find it helpful!
Seversky, this is an information age. We know that GIGO-limited computation is a non-rational dynamic-stochastic process driven by organisation of the substrate, signals and/or codes, programmed elements etc. Not only for familiar digital machines but for analogue ones and neural, weighted sum networks. You are trying to pass a long past due IOU off because you have begged the worldview question and are forced to try to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Cannot is well warranted, and the poof magic of “emergence” is thinly disguised appeal to something from nothing. Inescapably morally governed rational freedom does not reduce to or poof up out of a computational process. And that moral government you cannot but appeal to in trying to argue with us is a further clue that the roots of reality go beyond an evolutionary, materialistic causal-temporal process. KF
ES & TF, the roots in deep ignorance of logic of being issues are increasingly obvious. KF
25 Kairosfocus
I think Seversky has seen way too many times Terminator 2.
The Materialist Religion
*(John Searle is a prominent atheist philosopher).
seversky:
Nature producing a coded information processing system would be the miracle of miracles.
Was the software that runs your computer “magicked” into existence or are you just another agenda-driven troll?
It’s actually a HUGE help to anyone who knows how to conduct an investigation. It tells us where to start looking and how to conduct said investigation- just for starters.
So, again, your ignorance still isn’t an argument.
EugeneS/20
The proposal of a questionable concept such as a necessary being reads like an ad hoc solution to the issue of an infinitely long causal chain which is regarded as equally problematic.
29 Seversky
Thus spoke Seversky.
How versed are you in A-T metaphysics?
I’d bet you don’t have a clue and you don’t even understand what you’re talking about.
Run, Seversky, run!
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.co.....d.html?m=1
Seversky,
If God created time and space, what happened BEFORE God created time?
[sound of head exploding]
There goes your infinite regress of gods. 😉
-Q
at 10 Seversky states:
and later on Seversky claims that
Yet, as Dr. Egnor pointed out, in looking at Near Death Experiences we find that there is abundant evidence substantiating the reality of “conscious intelligence not closely correlated with a physical brain or some other material substrate”, and yet Darwinists, such as Seversky, refuse to accept any of that evidence and, in Seversky’s words, to apply the ‘same standards of evidence’ to Near Death Experiences that they apply to Darwinian evolution.
As Dr. Egnor stated, “NDE’s show fellows like Coyne at their sneering unscientific irrational worst. Somebody finds a crushed fragment of a fossil and it’s earth-shaking evidence. Tens of million of people have life-changing spiritual experiences and it’s all a big yawn.”
Thus, contrary to Seversky’s claim, Seversky is certainly not “applying the same standards of evidence to all.”
Seversky, very much contrary to his claim, is very biased in which evidence he will allow himself to even consider..
Seversky also stated that
That is an Interesting claim for Seversky to make. Seversky, as far as I can tell, spends an inordinate amount of time on UD disparaging God as being on par with Hitler, or someone like that, and not ever ‘listening’ for what God may be saying in his personal life.
And yet, despite that, he claims that he wants to hear God?
Really???
Might I suggest that Seversky humble himself before God, (instead of constantly railing against God as if God is some sort of monster who is out to get him), if he truly wants to ‘hear’ from God?
Just a suggestion.
All I can do is relate my personal experience.
Thus Seversky, God is CERTAINLY not hiding from you. If it is anything, it is you who is trying to hide from Him.
Verse:
31 Querius
Seversky and co. have a very big problem with their heads*. They don’t understand yet (or pretend not to notice) how damaging their (materialist) fall into epistemological idealism/ indirect realism is. So damaging that it’s in fact irretrievable.
Those so proud of “mapping the external world” live in fact trapped inside their little skulls.
Ain’t life ironic? 🙂
Naturalism’s Epistemological Nightmare
Truthfreedom,
Exactly! For one thing, Severksy & Co. have chained themselves within Plato’s Cave. For example
https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm
And that’s why they’re always asking for definitions of common words.
-Q