Things I just don't understand and questions I cannot get answered

How did mindless, purposeless forces/matter up and produce mindful purposeful assertions of mindless purposeless forces/matter as the genesis of being?

When, exactly, did intelligence jump into the picture and how? When did purpose and intention enter the stage and by what mechanism?

At what point did unconscious, unintelligent matter somehow become conscious and intelligent? By what alchemical processes was this made possible?

How did unconscious matter become self-conscious enough to question its own genesis?

How did this consciousness conclude that it was really unreal and merely a product of unconscious matter?

How did this consciousness then come to unquestioningly believe in the truth of this conclusion even though this consciousness had no clue as to how or why it arose at all?

And how did this illogical and unsupported conclusion come to be regarded as reasonable and scientific?


It is far easier to ridicule these types of questions than it is to answer them, with scorn being the default setting directed at those who haven’t unquestioningly accepted the indoctrination of Darwinism and the materialistic/naturalistic foundation upon which it rests.

We are told that any and every behavior and trait of organisms is simply the expression of a genetic code, but it is never explained how this code up and coalesced out of mindless chemical reactions in order to start the ball rolling in the first place.

We are told with unquestioned authority that no matter how things appear, no matter how sensible it might seem to posit such, in no way, shape, or form, was any sort of intelligence involved in what so clearly seems to be a process shot through with intelligence from the cellular level on up.

When it is pointed out that this denial of inherent intelligence makes no sense whatsoever, we are told that we are arguing from incredulity.

It would seem so.

But why that is a bad thing in this case is left unexplained.


To hold the view that the universe is inherently intelligent is seen as inherently unintelligent by those who deem themselves inherently intelligent for not believing in inherent intelligence.

Which leads us back to the where we started: when, exactly, did intelligence and purpose and intention come into the picture and by what alchemy did they arise from a universe sans intelligence, purpose, or intention?

That is the six million dollar question isn't it?

Many people receive funding in order to try to find the answer to this most imperative of questions, but I doubt we will ever find the answer.

Many have sought it, many think they have found the answer through religion, but if only it were that simple.

reply to post by BlueMoonJoe


why not desperation ?

funBox

You know what's really messed up! WE ARE IN FULL REVERSE! ><
BTW I did enjoy your post. ^- above stands as previously stated.

reply to post by BlueMoonJoe

When, exactly, did intelligence jump into the picture and how? When did purpose and intention enter the stage and by what mechanism?

Heres a good link

THE BIG BANG OF HUMAN EVOLUTION

The hominid brain grew at an accelerating pace until it reached its present size of 1500cc about 200,000 years ago. Yet uniquely human abilities such the invention of highly sophisticated "standardized" multi- part tools, tailored clothes, art, religious belief and perhaps even language are thought to have emerged quite rapidly around 40,000 years ago — a sudden explosion of human mental abilities and culture that is sometimes called the "big bang." If the brain reached its full human potential — or at least size — 200,000 years ago why did it remain idle for 150,000 years? Most scholars are convinced that the big bang occurred because of some unknown genetic change in brain structure. For instance, the archeologist Steve Mithen has just written a book in which he claims that before the big bang there were three different brain modules in the human brain that were specialized for "social or machiavellian intelligence", for "mechanical intelligence" or tool use, and for "natural history" (a propensity to classify). These three modules remained isolated from each other but around 50,000 years ago some genetic change in the brain suddenly allowed them to communicate with each other, resulting in the enormous flexibility and versatility of human consciousness.

A selection from the paper sourced



I have a lot of questions regarding this topic as well, the article above highlights and addresses questions involving our brain development asks questions like why do fossil records assert we had our brains fully developed as they are today millions of years ago yet we didn't see the emergence of society and tool making until 150000 years ago? Or something to that effect (I may have the numbers wrong) but the article is worth the read.

reply to post by BlueMoonJoe

How did mindless, purposeless forces/matter up and produce mindful purposeful assertions of mindless purposeless forces/matter as the genesis of being

Its a natures law that biology breeds complexity and complexity is the order in a chaotic universe, in fact complexity is dependent on order to exists... The interactions that exists at a cellular level in any multicellular animal are intrinsically the jump point to ever organized exchanges and coordination...

When, exactly, did intelligence jump into the picture and how? When did purpose and intention enter the stage and by what mechanism?

Intelligence is the outcome of evolutionary process, qui ca its purpose (lack of hands-on direction does not exclude an ordered design), as it should be obvious that generally speaking it has evolutionary benefits.

At what point did unconscious, unintelligent matter somehow become conscious and intelligent? By what alchemical processes was this made possible?

How did unconscious matter become self-conscious enough to question its own genesis?

By mutation and evolution and its selection of the optimal path for the existent environment. It is the purpose of all life, the emergence of self directed selection and evolution. The same force that drives creatures to select mates of complementary immune systems and promotes symbiosis as the ultimate state is ultimately (for our understanding) expressed in the emergence of unselfconscious participation in the process...

How did this consciousness conclude that it was really unreal and merely a product of unconscious matter?

How did this consciousness then come to unquestioningly believe in the truth of this conclusion even though this consciousness had no clue as to how or why it arose at all?

Because we found no other conscious matter. That is why we see the new trend is to link creation, Godliness to aliens. The time of magic is ending...

There is no consensus in the last to yet. First we need to be able to create life ourselves or find intelligent life elsewhere (even different non intelligent life will help).

And how did this illogical and unsupported conclusion come to be regarded as reasonable and scientific?

Because it came first and so is deeper entrenched in human culture. The scientific process is also more complex to understand that just say it is a magical secret. In any case I disagree that it is ever considered scientific (only for a minority that does not understand the distinction or intentionally attempt the collage)...

Darwinism and the materialistic/naturalistic foundation upon which it rests.

This are not the end of the theory just the defining start, things have evolved beyond Darwinism. In any case I for myself believe in (and see) a magic design.

To hold the view that the universe is inherently intelligent is seen as inherently unintelligent by those who deem themselves inherently intelligent for not believing in inherent intelligence. Which leads us back to the where we started: when, exactly, did intelligence and purpose and intention come into the picture and by what alchemy did they arise from a universe sans intelligence, purpose, or intention?

I disagrees with your generalizations. I see no problem for intelligence to arise from inherently unintelligent matter (as you called it). I am a programmer myself and can probably see that the design ultimately shapes content, especially in unintended and obvious ways and this without physicality. The question is resumed to this one view, if the design was not exactly such it is would there ever be anyone to question it ? To me there is obvious a design but I refute the idea to call it intelligence, especially in human terms or that we would ever be able to scrutinize any deeper meaning beyond what is simplistically apparent to any living creature. Live long, seek happiness and multiply.

reply to post by BlueMoonJoe


42

Oh wait wrong question. Honestly there is no easy answer to this. To completly understand you would have to spend decades studying many different subjects and then you are still just making slightly more educated guesses than most.

Brotherman has been digging deep into this topic. His nice find there is an excellent start.

My take on this is intelligence/consciousness originates OUTSIDE the body........or has an outside component...
Think like we are discorporate intelligences who can jump into our bodies at birth....and leave at death....
But we come from some unknown source....

reply to post by stirling


That goes against every thing that has been observed.

reply to post by BlueMoonJoe

To hold the view that the universe is inherently intelligent is seen as inherently unintelligent by those who deem themselves inherently intelligent for not believing in inherent intelligence.

Which leads us back to the where we started: when, exactly, did intelligence and purpose and intention come into the picture and by what alchemy did they arise from a universe sans intelligence, purpose, or intention?

"Cosmic Purpose and the Contingency of Human Evolution

Ernan McMullin
Department of Philosophy
Notre Dame University


I am grateful to the other members of our consultation at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton who, over the several years of our dialogue, helped so much to sharpen for me the issues that are discussed in this paper. A version of the paper from an earlier stage in the dialogue appeared as "Evolutionary contingency and cosmic purpose" in a Festschrift for Michael Buckley, S.J., Finding God in All Things, ed. Michael J. Himes and Stephen J. Pope, New York: Herder, 1996, 140-161."

SOURCE

I believe this paper will also at least help you answer some questions or maybe perhaps force you to formulate new ones in regards to the section I quoted from you, this paper is not written in a way I would consider dismissive but it is heavily based on logical argument as it is from the department of philosophy.

Woodcarver
reply to post by stirling

 

That goes against every thing that has been observed.

Actually, there is a great deal of observations which tend to support this idea......
NDEs for example.....
Remote Viewing, possibly, as well as the fact that memory seems to be available outside the shell as well.....
Or we could go into reincarnation stories too..............

BlueMoonJoe
And how did this illogical and unsupported conclusion come to be regarded as reasonable and scientific?


It is far easier to ridicule these types of questions than it is to answer them, with scorn being the default setting directed at those who haven’t unquestioningly accepted the indoctrination of Darwinism and the materialistic/naturalistic foundation upon which it rests.

Perhaps we should reject the 'indoctrination of Galileoism' and pretend the stars are pinpricks in the curtain of night, or reject the 'indoctrination of Pasteurism' and just hope we get better. Because in times gone past they were thought to be illogical and unsupported conclusions. Does anyone deny them now?

The reasons we don't reject the above is because it's inherently human to want to understand. I *want* to know how I got here - in all the fascinating detail. I *want* to know our place in the universe, as beautiful and terrifying as it is.

If I get to my death bed without even trying, surely I've been nothing more than a waste of oxygen.

reply to post by stirling


It is a very interesting thought, I have thought and lately been questioning similar sentiments. Personally for me I tend to not exactly know where I fall under any category relating to evolutionary or creationism in all of its forms chiefly biological, cosmological, and consciousness. I have not found anything yet to suggest that their isn't some kind of infinite cosmological energy that all things are interconnected to, of course this is just a belief, however if I want to accept that the big bang is true then I am also suggesting that we did come from a singular source of infinite cosmic energy source as all matter is energy and for some reason our conscious being is also attached to this. In this particular sense I cannot say we can observe or measure this but I do believe it exists. This of course is only MY opinion and belief and understand that it may not be others.

reply to post by Brotherman


Thanks. That looks interesting. I remember watching some docu about this big bang of the brain and how at one point it just seemed to almost double in size. One of the things I've always wondered about is what you touch on here. Yo, what's with all this extra firepower? This stuff is not necessary for life on the savannah, so what's going on here? It's one of the reasons I've never been able to swing with the standard Darwinian model. There's just these weird jumps that don't in the least seem accounted for with any kind of gradualism. Don 't even bring up language and grammar.

There just seem to be more going on than the model can account for because of that a priori insistence in adhering to the materialist model. I come from a tradition where consciousness is primary and evolving back toward the source, so that's the way I've always seen it.

stirling
My take on this is intelligence/consciousness originates OUTSIDE the body........or has an outside component...
Think like we are discorporate intelligences who can jump into our bodies at birth....and leave at death....
But we come from some unknown source....

Now that has an Interesting Ping to it!

Peace

reply to post by BlueMoonJoe


Don't get me wrong here, quite a few members on here especially the ones that frequent the OnC forum will tell you I'm for the most part an ardent skeptic with leanings towards ID (that isn't abrahamic god) Over the course of a few weeks I have been entertaining myself by digging in pretty hard into many of the scientific models presented by scientists, philosophers, and theists trying to grasp a better understanding of not only the argument but also to the complex and often difficult to read science and logic applied. It has been difficult quite a few respected members on ATS have been trying to help me learn some of this and I have to say, lots of the questions you have, I have myself. If you want to get into a very complex aspect of this involving intelligence those two sources I posted earlier and then this one:

Ph.D Dissertation M. Magnus

The notion that there is a regular correlation between the form of a word and its meaning is, of course, controversial. In this dissertation my intention has been to shed light on that controversy by conducting a variety of tests -- for the most part on a fairly large scale -- which quantify the extent of the correspondence between sound and meaning in words. I found in the course of this project that phonosemantic correlations were much more pervasive than I initially anticipated and certainly greater than is generally supposed in the linguistics literature. Furthermore, I cannot but see that these tests show that quite general natural laws are productively operative in language which account for most of the correlations observed. If further research indeed corroborates my findings, then it follows that the meaning of every word in every language is in part (only in part!) inherent in its form. The sign is therefore not wholly arbitrary, and it is not possible to devise an abstract representation of language which is entirely unrelated to the form of language itself. The most important results of the experiments in this dissertation seem to me to be these:

* I find that much confusion regarding linguistic iconism can be attributed to the assumption that 'word semantics' is best understood as 'word reference'. I believe these tests show this presumption to be unhelpful. If a word's meaning is analyzed into components -- only one of which is its referent -- it can be shown that some aspects of a word's meaning are arbitrary and others are not. It's therefore not the case that in some words or languages iconism holds more sway than in others. Rather since all words must have these requisite semantic components in order to function at all, the semantics of any word must be in part predictable from its form and in part not.
* Reference is essentially arbitrary. One cannot predict the referent of a word just by hearing it. In words with more concrete reference, the component of reference is more salient, and the iconic sound-meaning is consequently less salient. Therefore, the apparent effect of the sound-meaning is inversely proportional on the concreteness of the referent.
* Individual phonemes and phonetic features are meaning-bearing. They each have a unique semantics which can be identified by first measuring the semantic disproportions within phonologically defined classes of words and then the converse -- measuring the phonological disproportions within semantic classes. One finds in this way that every word which contains a given phoneme bears an element of meaning which is absent in words not containing this phoneme. One finds further than the effect of the phoneme-meaning varies with the position that the phoneme bears within the syllable. In addition, one finds that all phonemes which have a common phonetic feature also have a common element of meaning.
* It is important to distinguish types of sound-meaning correlations:

The significance of this link after reading the paper about "Big Bang" of human intelligence paints a fairly smoother road to understanding after this sprawl of intelligence and the importance of proto linguistics pretty much illustrates a likely approach in understanding why civilization itself is now more or less universal as we can begin to peel back layers of how over time we communicated and how our early means of communication had to develop alongside intelligence to further ourselves into the present.

reply to post by Brotherman

I have not found anything yet to suggest that their isn't some kind of infinite cosmological energy that all things are interconnected to, of course this is just a belief, however if I want to accept that the big bang is true then I am also suggesting that we did come from a singular source of infinite cosmic energy source as all matter is energy and for some reason our conscious being is also attached to this. In this particular sense I cannot say we can observe or measure this but I do believe it exists. This of course is only MY opinion and belief and understand that it may not be others.

I can't agree that is only your opinion as it seems in line with what stirling and I are both positing. I don't know what stirling's background is, but mine is resonant with what you are putting forth, the idea that consciousness is primary. This seems to be what stirling is saying as well, but I probably shouldn't assume. Regardless, even if there are differences in detail, it would seem that our Venn would have significant overlap.

reply to post by BlueMoonJoe


Thats fair enough, I wrote that in that manner as to not attract the prove it crowd, also it may overlap nicely in the Venn but as far as its significance within my application to what I believe versus what I know is still ongoing, then again I guess the same can be said for anyone with questions on similar sciences with similar beliefs

You know what? Here's what I learned, "Why Ask Why?" To those types of questions I mean, unless you want to..but otherwise do it like the rest of us. Quietly, or ask your mom.

queenofsheba
You know what? Here's what I learned, "Why Ask Why?" To those types of questions I mean, unless you want to..but otherwise do it like the rest of us. Quietly, or ask your mom.

Mom told me to google it and leave her alone