I've rehashed the post to put relevant topics together, and added headers.
Eyes and Ants
Neither the eye nor DNA show any hallmarks of design.
Wait a second...
You're making a judgement call all on your own. It's like finding a fully formed computer, one that is capable of "rewiring" itself and adapt to various environments, and you then claim: "The adapting computer shows no hallmarks of intelligent design". Baloney. The very fact that life/DNA can adapt itself to virtually any and all environments containing water ALONE would suggest it's an "intelligent design", one designed to "spread life" throughout the cosmos. The fact it can "adapt" to create such "intricate" things like an eye, a brain, opposing thumbs, etc would also suggest a "design" that was intentionally setup to favor "intelligence" and facilitate the holding of "awareness" also demonstrates a "design" behind the DNA.
Your personal judgement call is only that, a personal "subjective belief".
The theory of common descent is still by far the best explanation we have for the origin of these things. Do you deny that it's a valid theory?
Not at all. It would seem that one perfectly programmed set of DNA is capable of adapting itself to virtually any planet containing water and heat. As a software programmer, I'd say that's a rather "elegant design" in fact.
Regardless, it is not 'extreme' intelligence. It's a very simple intelligence operating under evolved algorithms, instincts evolved to tell it to do certain simple things given certain simple conditions. The study of these algorithms is fascinating in its own right, but that's all it is: evolved instincts. "1) Walk somewhere. 2) If you find food, bring it back in pieces till its gone. 3) Repeat (1)". This very simple algorithm creates complex systems, like trains of gatherers or swarms of soldiers or what have you. Looking at complex behaviour and inferring an 'extreme' intelligence is fallacious. Ironically, ants are a very good example of complex behaviour without any highly intelligent being involved. Myrmecological research is quite advanced, you might want to take a delve into Google Scholar.
I think you're missing the whole 'herding' aspect ant behavior, not to mention their ability to cross water as a "team" and all the things they tend to do "collectively", and "intelligently". You're "claiming" its not "intelligent", but what then is "high intelligence". Ants not only manipulate their environment to serve their collective, they create "large cities" where some ant "specialize" as "hunter gatherers", while some become more specialized "herders" of aphids. Some of them work in the nursery. Some of them change jobs and careers over time.
How exactly shall we "score" something like "intelligence", particularly on a "social networking' scale?
Then why harp on about the trillions of electrical currents in the Sun? If sheer abundance isn't enough to prove something is concious, that rather undermines your whole point.
If all we had were trillions of circuits, your point would not be moot. As it stands however, there are plenty of examples of humans interacting in the present moment with something they call "God. Note that virtually nobody on Earth claims to experience or use "accelerating dark energy" or "dark matter" in their ordinary life. Nobody claims to meet the dark energy god during NDEs for that matter.
Because 'God' is a word used to denote an intelligence, a concious being that traditionally answers prayers, attends to departed souls, etc. It is unscientific, and intellectually dishonest, to hoist such attributes without justification.
It is likewise unscientific and intellectually dishonest to ignore such attributes when they exist, like those trillions of electrical circuits we can observe on just the *OUTSIDE* of the sun, the solar cyclical aspects we observe, the constantly changing flare processes, etc.
It seems to me that we are both capable of "projecting" what we want on the data. How then do we determine which method is "best" in determining truth and how do we demonstrate "cause/effect" relationships? How would your "Dark energy sky entity" fair in this same "testing" process?
You can call it 'god', but that warps the definition of 'god' beyond any meaningful distinction.
Not really. The power and scope of the universe makes humans seem "puny". The universe is far more 'powerful', more "ancient", and potentially far more "intelligent" than mere humans.
Circuits
Hardly, that's all the word 'circuit' has ever meant. Just because it's a small circuit doesn't make it any less of one. Reality has the curious habit of not caring about human conveniences. The atom is not a useful circuit (nanotechnology notwithstanding), so we don't usually think of it as such. But, nonetheless, it is a circuit. The same is true of plasma: a cold hunk of metal is as much a plasma as that found in a Tokamak, regardless of the fact that we don't generally regard it as such. It's still a plasma.
IMO you're intentionally "dumbing down" circuit theory to the point of uselessness. By your definition the entire cosmos is filled with "circuits" of unimaginable numbers since most of the universe is 'plasma'. We can talk about how plasmas "organize themselves" into large scale current flows I suppose. Why and how does it do that? What "generates" these currents?
The problem with your definition of a 'circuit' is that every "electron" is single circuit. We can charge the flow of such electrons inside the human brain, but then you could argue that an "organized flow" and even a "highly organized flow system" is not "aware" or "intelligent" unto itself. We would then need to look at the "total system" to try to understand if it is "intelligent", *ONLY* by looking at a "few" of the actual flow systems that we can "observe' in our little visible sliver of the entire physical universe.
We need to look at entire "circuit systems" in order to look for higher intelligence, and defining every charge separation as a "circuit" really isn't helpful IMO.
If you showed me actual similarities, sure. But your similarities are literally just 'they're both a bit wiggly'. Would a neurosurgeon mistake such a graph for genuine brain activity? No, of course not, because they're not similar. They are, at best, both graphs.
Sure, but both involve "electron flow activity", in this case, high energy external discharge activities which you seem to be utterly ignoring. There are five minute solar cycles, 22 years solar cycles, all sorts of things we could "graph" to show cyclical electrical activities from the sun. It produces and directs energy in much the same way as a living organism.
Your only objection to the tide analogy is that it doesn't involve the flow of electrons - rather stunningly missing the point. Simply saying "Aha! They're both a bit wiggly!" is not a valid argument. At its crudest, correlation does not imply causation.
So if were were to be a couple of amebas sitting inside a human brain trying to determine if the system we live inside of is "alive" and "aware, how me we go about that? How would we determine "causation" for movement of electrons? How does your "dark sky entity" fair in this "causation test"?
First, the point of my analogy has been consistent: it's always been an example of a system that is dense in electrical circuits but is not concious. You've yet to come up with any rebuttal to that. Let's assume that it does somehow disprove atheism (I'll address this in my second point) - so what? Whether it disproves atheism or has no influence on it, it does its job: it undermines your central claim, that the universe is concious.
No. At best it "potentially" undermines the "certainty" that the collection of "circuits" is actually "aware". If it is not aware and alive and communicating with humans, then we should be able to "predict" that humans do not have 'experiences" of this higher intelligence in their lives, right? How well does you "null hypothesis" actually "predict" what we observe in human behavior?
Second, you have twice now ignored the facts that a) the computer analogy doesn't imply the universe's electrical circuits point to intelligent design, and b) there is a third alternative: that electrical circuits are neither hallmarks of design or of conciousness.
The problem with that claim is that you've produced no examples of that third option actually appearing in nature. At best it's a "theoretical possibility", much like "invisible sky energy unicorns" are a "theoretical possibility". Your third option hasn't been demonstrated to exist in nature.
I gotta stop here for now, but I'll pick up the rest a bit later today.
