Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

News flash! Evolution discovered to have reasoning powers!

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From a recent story on bird intelligence:

A researcher from Imperial College London and his colleagues have developed for the first time a map of a typical bird brain, showing how different regions are connected together to process information. By comparing it to brain diagrams for different mammals such as humans, the team discovered that areas important for high-level cognition such as long-term memory and problem solving are wired up to other regions of the brain in a similar way. This is despite the fact that both mammal and bird brains have been evolving down separate paths over hundreds of millions of years.

The team suggest that evolution has discovered a common blueprint for high-level cognition in brain development.

Birds have been shown in previous studies to possess a range of skills such as a capacity for complex social reasoning, an ability to problem solve and some have even demonstrated the capability to craft and use tools.

Colour added, of course.

“Discovered a common blueprint”? If “evolution” is that smart, we may as well just admit that it is design.

By the way, whose blueprint was it? According to the story, evolution didn’t create the common blueprint, only discovered it. So there is someone even smarter out there who actually developed the blueprint. But how was it put into action, down separate paths over hundreds of millions of years?

See what we mean, why you have to teach Darwinism early, before kids begin to theenk?

We could have put up a free photo of a bird, but we figure you would prefer to see this instead:

Sleep tight.

Note: When it really is a news flash, we use the term “Breaking.”

Comments
Barb Amen about memory being the birds aid in doing great things. Yet memory is not intelligence I say. I think all creatures have great memories and also people. I accept the possibility we have greater memories, yet not sure. It is presumed by mankind that memory is in some equation relative to intelligence. Yet I think not. I think our intelligence is unrelated to memory. So then a baby is as intelligent as a adult in thinking ability but not in memory ability. A baby is severally retarded. Retardation is only a failure of memnory and not thinking ability. Thus the Christian can say that our souls being made in Gods image are intelligent like God and so can not be affected by the material world. Only the memory can as its part of a common blueprint for biology.Robert Byers
July 22, 2013
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Sorry. My #4, a little 'off topic', was addressed primarily to Philip.Axel
July 20, 2013
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Ahaa! But will God and Job (up there with Him, no doubt) be able to beat the Evomalution 'noise machine'...? Watch this space! Have you seen this NDE clip of the Kiwi, Ian McCormack? Extraordinary, brilliant testimony, as he was such an unmistakeably mad-hat, atheist tearaway, and his enthusiasm as he recounts Christ quoting to him, chapter and verse, from the bible is really something to see! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTU7MfOgDKM&NR=1&feature=endscreenAxel
July 20, 2013
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A bird's "complex social reasoning" still does not approach that of a human's, but it's interesting to read about what the researchers have found. Birds would need high level cognition, particularly long-term memory, in order to migrate as many species do: the swallows return to Capistrano, CA, like clockwork. The world champion migrator—the arctic tern—breeds north of the Arctic Circle yet spends the northern winter in the Antarctic. In a typical year, this small seabird travels between 25,000 and 30,000 miles [40,000 to 50,000 km]—the equivalent of circling the globe. White storks breed in Northern Europe and winter in South Africa, making a round trip of 15,000 miles [24,000 km]. Thousands of these birds pass through Israel in the autumn and the spring, following a timetable known back in Bible times.—Jeremiah 8:7. Some 3,500 years ago, God posed the following question to the righteous man Job: “Is it owing to your understanding that the falcon soars up, that it spreads its wings to the south wind? Or is it at your order that an eagle flies upward and that it builds its nest high up?” In his reply Job rightly praised God for the amazing abilities of birds and other animals.—Job 39:26, 27; 42:2.Barb
July 20, 2013
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I insist birds are dumb. Its fine to see like connections in bird brains with humans because the connections are trivial. It would be that way if the god of physics did the same thing with biology. Its a hypothesis in good standing. In fact there should be a common blueprint to all of biology if there was a creator. The difference is that people think with our souls made in gods image/smarts while birds think probably with no soul and mostly are just a living being using the memory for figuring things out. Its been a great error, I think, to underrate the great thing of ,memory in its use for creatures thinking. Its a thing of the material world and our soul thinking is not. Birds have bird brains but its nothing to do with their brains.Robert Byers
July 20, 2013
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Of related note: Dogs Succeed While Chimps Fail at Following Finger Pointing: Chimpanzees Have Difficulty Identifying Object of Interest Based On Gestures - Feb. 8, 2012 Excerpt: The fact that chimpanzees do not understand communicative intentions of others, suggests that this may be a uniquely human form of communication. The dogs however challenge this hypothesis. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120208180251.htm Humans Evolved from Dogs (Dogs shown to be smarter than chimps) - February 2012 Excerpt: Birds are actually smarter than dogs, and dolphins than birds. So we have to update our earlier report that humans evolved from pigeons. The new evolutionary tree is: chimps begat dogs, who begat birds, who begat dolphins, who begat people. Hydrogen begat everything; or was it nothing that begat everything? via crevo Bird Evolution vs. The Actual Fossil Evidence - video and notes http://vimeo.com/30926629 Flight: The Genius of Birds - Official Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46rE4BfWN_M FLIGHT: The Genius of Birds - Skeletal system - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11fZS_B6UW4 Flight: The Genius of Birds - Embryonic Development - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ah-gT0hTto Video playlist of different birds: Rare Glimpses of Amazing Birds-of-Paradise Courtship Rituals - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTR21os8gTA&list=PLgSpqOFj1Ta4xHFM4kKR4VTW8CJmPNNNA Featherweight songbird is a long-distance champ - February 2012 Excerpt: A tiny songbird weighing just two tablespoons of sugar migrates from the Arctic to Africa and back, a distance of up to 29,000 kilometres (18,000 miles), scientists reported on Wednesday. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-featherweight-songbird-long-distance-champ.html Where Does a Bird’s Magnetic Sense Reside? - June 30, 2013 Excerpt: The beak contains areas rich in iron, the article explains. Prior research had been inconclusive about a beak-to-brain connection from those iron particles to the brain. Recently, a German team cut the nerve between those regions and the brain in half of a group of Eurasian reed warblers, then moved the whole population from their normal take-off grounds in Russia to the east, 1000 km away. Here’s what happened as a result: "The warblers that had their beak-to-brain connection cut flew northeast, as if they had departed from near Kaliningrad -- they had lost their "map sense" and could no longer determine their location. Those with the nerve intact, on the other hand, quickly oriented themselves and turned northwest, toward their breeding grounds, the team reports this week in PLOS ONE. This meant that the beak-to-brain system, which, according to the earlier tests, had no impact on the "compass sense," did matter for the "map sense" of the birds -- if the link was damaged, the birds simply did not know they had been displaced." But the experiments are still inconclusive, so far, to explain all the observations. More iron clumps have been found in the birds’ inner ear, Current Biology reports: "This organelle is found in hair cells in a wide variety of avian species, but not in rodents or in humans. This structure may function as (1) a store of excess iron, (2) a stabilizer of stereocilia, or (3) a mediator of magnetic detection. Given the specific subcellular location, elemental composition, and evolutionary conservation, we propose that this structure is an integral component of the sensory apparatus in birds." By “evolutionary conservation,” the authors meant no evolution was found. The trait is common to all birds. Further, no precursor in reptiles was identified, nor any ancestry for the organelle. It appears evolutionary theory is useless for understanding bird migration. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/06/where_does_a_bi073911.html verse and music: Matthew 10:31 "So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows." Paul McCartney - Blackbird [Live Acoustic] [High Quality] - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_SrYqLrljUbornagain77
July 19, 2013
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Of related note: Dogs Succeed While Chimps Fail at Following Finger Pointing: Chimpanzees Have Difficulty Identifying Object of Interest Based On Gestures - Feb. 8, 2012 Excerpt: The fact that chimpanzees do not understand communicative intentions of others, suggests that this may be a uniquely human form of communication. The dogs however challenge this hypothesis. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120208180251.htm Humans Evolved from Dogs (Dogs shown to be smarter than chimps) - February 2012 Excerpt: Birds are actually smarter than dogs, and dolphins than birds. So we have to update our earlier report that humans evolved from pigeons. The new evolutionary tree is: chimps begat dogs, who begat birds, who begat dolphins, who begat people. Hydrogen begat everything; or was it nothing that begat everything? http://crev.info/2012/02/humans-evolved-from-dogs/ Bird Evolution vs. The Actual Fossil Evidence - video and notes http://vimeo.com/30926629 Flight: The Genius of Birds - Official Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46rE4BfWN_M FLIGHT: The Genius of Birds - Skeletal system - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11fZS_B6UW4 Flight: The Genius of Birds - Embryonic Development - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ah-gT0hTto Video playlist of different birds: Rare Glimpses of Amazing Birds-of-Paradise Courtship Rituals - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTR21os8gTA&list=PLgSpqOFj1Ta4xHFM4kKR4VTW8CJmPNNNA Featherweight songbird is a long-distance champ - February 2012 Excerpt: A tiny songbird weighing just two tablespoons of sugar migrates from the Arctic to Africa and back, a distance of up to 29,000 kilometres (18,000 miles), scientists reported on Wednesday. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-featherweight-songbird-long-distance-champ.html Where Does a Bird’s Magnetic Sense Reside? - June 30, 2013 Excerpt: The beak contains areas rich in iron, the article explains. Prior research had been inconclusive about a beak-to-brain connection from those iron particles to the brain. Recently, a German team cut the nerve between those regions and the brain in half of a group of Eurasian reed warblers, then moved the whole population from their normal take-off grounds in Russia to the east, 1000 km away. Here’s what happened as a result: "The warblers that had their beak-to-brain connection cut flew northeast, as if they had departed from near Kaliningrad -- they had lost their "map sense" and could no longer determine their location. Those with the nerve intact, on the other hand, quickly oriented themselves and turned northwest, toward their breeding grounds, the team reports this week in PLOS ONE. This meant that the beak-to-brain system, which, according to the earlier tests, had no impact on the "compass sense," did matter for the "map sense" of the birds -- if the link was damaged, the birds simply did not know they had been displaced." But the experiments are still inconclusive, so far, to explain all the observations. More iron clumps have been found in the birds’ inner ear, Current Biology reports: "This organelle is found in hair cells in a wide variety of avian species, but not in rodents or in humans. This structure may function as (1) a store of excess iron, (2) a stabilizer of stereocilia, or (3) a mediator of magnetic detection. Given the specific subcellular location, elemental composition, and evolutionary conservation, we propose that this structure is an integral component of the sensory apparatus in birds." By “evolutionary conservation,” the authors meant no evolution was found. The trait is common to all birds. Further, no precursor in reptiles was identified, nor any ancestry for the organelle. It appears evolutionary theory is useless for understanding bird migration. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/06/where_does_a_bi073911.html verse and music: Matthew 10:31 "So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows." Paul McCartney - Blackbird [Live Acoustic] [High Quality] - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_SrYqLrljUbornagain77
July 19, 2013
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