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My point about behavior is that it's not always so easily explained.
How does that puffer fish know how to build a perfectly symmetrical concentric pattern of circles and decorate the ridges with shells?
Some kind of inbuilt memory from previous generations? That's a highly complex process. It's not just 'I'm hungry, I eat'. The fish actually builds something.
My point is, how does it know?
It's a question of complex conscious processing that is inbuilt in the fish's DNA somehow. How can a conscious process be passed on generation to generation?
But is it conscious? It may simply be following a few inbuilt rules that are hard wired into it's brain.
Yes, I get that.
My point is that 'behavior' is not easily explainable in terms of evolution.
Physical evolution is very easily explainable in evolutionary terms.. If you are not familiar, one of the best examples is the famous peppered moth. It's the example i always use to explain evolution to non believers.
The peppered moth lived on chimneys in industrial Britain. It's color was black and white speckles and so was greatly camouflaged by the soot on the chimneys so birds could not see them easily.. As factories were required to clean up their act, smoke was reduced and the buildings surfaces were cleaned, leaving the peppered moth exposed, no longer camouflaged by the blackened buildings. The birds would pick off the darker speckled moths that were now more easily seen and the whiter ones survived as they were better camouflaged. The peppered moth evolved to be a whiter, less speckled version in just a few years.
This is a great and clear example of natural selection in action. You can see it and you can explain it. It's simple, it's clear.
My point about behavior is that it's not always so easily explained.
How does that puffer fish know how to build a perfectly symmetrical concentric pattern of circles and decorate the ridges with shells?
Some kind of inbuilt memory from previous generations? That's a highly complex process. It's not just 'I'm hungry, I eat'. The fish actually builds something.
My point is, how does it know?
It's a question of complex conscious processing that is inbuilt in the fish's DNA somehow. How can a conscious process be passed on generation to generation?
There are two kinds of instict - inherited or evolved instinct and learned or educated instinct.
We have not been a natural creature since we began farming and herding. Social behaviour (or even behavior) has been invented and developed by humans and that's what we are educated in till it becomes instinctive. We confuse the two and think that wiping your feet before going indoors is a natural thing to do. We even think this makes us a virtuous person if we do it.
We will continue to be confused about what is natural and instinctive for us all the time this stuff is not understood and is not taught. And those who want to perpetrate the lie that all this stuff is god -given and we either do what the god's spokebods say or we are going to punished, in the next lfe or preferably, this one.
The realisation that instinct can be learned until it is innate (automatic reactions, like tying knots instinctively) and is often confused with evolved instinct, was significant in rationalism winning the Morality argument. It enabled us to realise that some instincts were innate (though that, while making them natural, doesn't necessarily make then Good) and were common to all humans, but variants were built on top of those. We all have a family structure, art, music and indeed law codes, building, religion and war.
Thus they have a common origin but it is Not a god - which is the Too Easy answer and the differences in god -claims are no more to be excused by blind men touching a different part of the elephant than differences in language, music or even cuisine.
We have to get over the too easy answer of popping 'God' in as the stopgap answer for anything we can't explain, even if it doesn't help some people to exploit us for their own personal benefit.
Why wouldn't it be conscious?
Why can't the fish be following inbuilt rules consciously?
What are the inbuilt rules anyway if not consciousness?
My dog is certainly conscious. He knows the words for walk, dinner, toy, leash, treat, bed, pee, squirrel, bird, ball and the names of all our family members and several other people. I know when he is happy. I know when he is trying to work out my signals. He can follow instructions and go and find a particular object.
If my dog is engaging in conscious processes, why not the fish?
It's clear to me that the fish is conscious. I don't know why it wouldn't be.
Anyway that just seems like a deflection from answering the question, how does it know how to build that?
I'm not asking anyone to answer the question because obviously we don't really know the answer.
An ongoing observation:. I'm suprised nobody else has come up with examples so far of things they have no good answers to.
The general concensus seems to be 'I don't know, therefore I don't care and it's all beyond my pay grade as an atheist anyway, so I leave that up to the scientists'.
I don't know what atheism is if it's not to reject the idea of a god and think instead about the why's and hows of existence.
The subjects of this thread are all legitimate questions to ask.
EDIT to add:
I suppose as a thread that ultimately has no real answers (right now at least) that it could be looked at more philosophically.
Philosophy usually throws up more questions than it can actually answer.
There are a ton of things I wonder about and have no good reason for. Like what's inside of a photon. I don't think about things that I have have absolutely no answer to for long though. I also do not form any belief or conclusion based on things I have absolutely no answer to. I never understood things like "We have absolutely no idea how the universe started so I am going to say [insert something] must of done it." Who thinks like that?
You are mistaken if you think its "I'll leave that up to scientist" Cruithne. They are all to happy to use science when it is being used to pound theist. Its not that its above their pay grade. They do not want to talk about anything that can give a theist something to make atheisms harder to sell. This site is for fighting religion. That is one of the top priorities.
There are a ton of things I wonder about and have no good reason for. Like what's inside of a photon. I don't think about things that I have have absolutely no answer to for long though. I also do not form any belief or conclusion based on things I have absolutely no answer to. I never understood things like "We have absolutely no idea how the universe started so I am going to say [insert something] must of done it." Who thinks like that?
You are mistaken if you think its "I'll leave that up to scientist" Cruithne. They are all to happy to use science when it is being used to pound theist. Its not that its above their pay grade. They do not want to talk about anything that can give a theist something to make atheisms harder to sell. This site is for fighting religion. That is one of the top priorities.
Yes, I get that.
My point is that 'behavior' is not easily explainable in terms of evolution.
Physical evolution is very easily explainable in evolutionary terms.. If you are not familiar, one of the best examples is the famous peppered moth. It's the example i always use to explain evolution to non believers.
The peppered moth lived on chimneys in industrial Britain. It's color was black and white speckles and so was greatly camouflaged by the soot on the chimneys so birds could not see them easily.. As factories were required to clean up their act, smoke was reduced and the buildings surfaces were cleaned, leaving the peppered moth exposed, no longer camouflaged by the blackened buildings. The birds would pick off the darker speckled moths that were now more easily seen and the whiter ones survived as they were better camouflaged. The peppered moth evolved to be a whiter, less speckled version in just a few years.
This is a great and clear example of natural selection in action. You can see it and you can explain it. It's simple, it's clear.
My point about behavior is that it's not always so easily explained.
How does that puffer fish know how to build a perfectly symmetrical concentric pattern of circles and decorate the ridges with shells?
Some kind of inbuilt memory from previous generations? That's a highly complex process. It's not just 'I'm hungry, I eat'. The fish actually builds something.
My point is, how does it know?
It's a question of complex conscious processing that is inbuilt in the fish's DNA somehow. How can a conscious process be passed on generation to generation?
Interesting, but I'm not sure I see why that's important to the discussion of evolution versus religion.
Interesting, but I'm not sure I see why that's important to the discussion of evolution versus religion.
I'm not discussing evolution versus religion.
I'm discussing things that cannot be explained from an atheist perspective, animal instinct and behaviors being one aspect of that.
I only happened to mention 'non believers' as the context in which I usually have to explain things, but as pertains to this thread I've barely touched the subject of religion.
This thread is a worldview as seen from an atheist perspective.
Religion isn't really relevant to this thread.
That would be because distance and time, as we measure and experience them with our consciousness, are illusions at our macrolevel of the spacetime field. The field is actually all that exists, not the individual manifestations that we occupy ourselves with. While this makes perfect sense to me, I do not expect you to accept or understand this view. My previous efforts to convey the underpinnings of the quantum spacetime field (unified consciousness field) have failed miserably, so I am not confident I would succeed in this endeavor. It is too far removed from our physical experiences as separate physical creatures.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
The thinking and making decisions is in the province of consciousness which most atheists refuse to see as playing any role as the substrate for our Reality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes
Of course we refuse to see, because you have no evidence for this claim, it goes against what we know, raises more questions than it answers, and in fact, does not answer any questions better than what neuroscience tells us. We have considered your argument and found it needs more data.
That we need more data is not disputed, but in your case, I suspect it is the bold that interferes with your objectivity considering the Quantum Field Theory and QED explanations. You need to realize and accept the fact that a quantum field (not substance or individual anything) is at the root of ALL manifestations that you perceive and cognitively process as "separate things'" Only time (Whitehead's "creative advance of nature" not our illusory "measured time") exists, NOT distance. There are no separate "anythings" to be separated by distance. To use the mystic conceptualization, the Oneness cannot be separated from itself.
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