supersport said:
You've got to be kidding me. You give me this conveluted explanation of evolution when you can't even give me one example of actual evolution?
There are plenty of examples of ("macro"-)evolution that you can read about at talkorigins and numerous other websites that have been linked to you a thousand times. The fact that you just ignore this indicates that you don't want a reasonable discussion.
You can't give me a single example of a mutation that adds a beneficial morphological feature
People have given you plenty of examples. There's only so much you can do to persuade someone with as much cognitive dissonance as you.
and you want me to believe it can accomplish all this? You need to wake up and join the real world. You are also forgetting that the brain has a function in all this.
Obviously, but we humans use intelligence to describe something we use at the level of higher consciousness (does the conscious mind ring any bells) to respond to situations. The brain is an organ with many different functions, and isn't only about higher consciousness, certainly not in organisms like salamanders. It plays a great role in autonomous responses as well. Do you need to think about breathing to keep breathing? Can you stop yourself from sneezing when you really need to sneeze? Your body has an amazing degree of autonomous processes for which no intelligence is required, and in less intelligent organisms, this degree is even higher.
It's amazing to me that evolutionists admit to an organ called the brain but they refuse to admit anything intelligent comes out of it
We have said no such thing, all I have said in this particular case is that there is no need for the higher consciousness to be involved in the response to the volatile chemicals. The salamander does not use its conscious mind (if it even has a real consciousness like we do, since this is highly linked with language), it doesn't smell the chemical and thinks, "Oh gosh, a predator is about, should I get out of my egg or just stay safely inside?", the smell simply causes a hormone to give the salamander the urge to stay in the egg, no conscious thinking is necessary, and thus no intelligence as we define it. Unless of course you want to define intelligence wider, and claim that a bacteria that uses sugars that are less abundant before sugars that are more abundant, because of the way its regulatory mechanisms work, encoded in its DNA, is intelligent. In the same way you could say a computer is intelligent, but then the term intelligence has lost its meaning.
-- like coordinating responses to stimuli. This mindset is so ridiculous, so ludicrous, so illogical and against all common sense that it really makes me wonder if these people have all their marbles.
If it is illogical, please point out how. All I've done is shown how the response to the situation is simply a result of evolution, and is an ability encoded in the DNA of the organism, rather than being the result of a conscious decision, which would be what you imply with an intelligent decision.
And my question has yet to be answered: if your brain is not intelligent, and your mind is not intelligent (oh, I forgot, you don't have one of those) and your cells are not intelligent, and your genome is not intelligent ----
I think your problem lies with the definition of intelligence. The way you are looking at it, the receptors in the membrane of
E. coli and the pathway that follows after activation of the receptor are intelligent because they cause a response that is beneficial to the organism. Fact is, this system has arisen because of evolution, it is completely material, and requires no higher consciousness. Maybe you've just found out that god isn't the intelligent designer you believe exists, but evolution is?
how exactly is it that you want me to believe that YOU as a whole are intelligent? Why should I take your word for anything?
I am a human, I have a higher consciousness, thus I posess intelligence as defined conventionally.
I noticed you also avoided the insect which is able to change color based on environment. No mystery chemicals that you can't identify -- just change.
http://dbs.umt.edu/research_labs/eml...r_research.htm
Nymphs of Leptoscelis tricolor express color plasticity; nymphs grow to match the color of their surrounding environment
If the link would work, I could see how exactly this system works. I can already see a perfect way of this working without intelligence. The nymphs should have different kinds of light receptors all specialized to absorb energy in different parts of the spectrum, and linked to different pigmentation pathways so that the appropriate colours are expressed on their body to the appropriate colours they detect in their environment. There is no need for a higher consciousness for this response, just the code of the different kinds of receptors in the DNA, the different pigments, and the pathways between the receptors and the altered pigmentation.