The Intelligence Behind Evolution?

Ah no, I was thinking more that the world might have gotten steadily more "mundane" over time.

Which in turn could just be Psi's relationship to our own planet/solar system/galaxy rotation, given some research noting a correlation between the Psi ability and magnetic fields, geological location, etc.

But a lot of mythology talks about a kind of break between a "mythic time" and a more "mundane" time.

Psi for me, is an exclusive ability of 'mind' and not dependent on matter, although it is related of course, or maybe corelated is a better description. 

The word "God" actually explains nothing, but is of course an inevitable concept or 'archetype'. The word is waiting to be formed from the mouths of the conscious, like clay is waiting to be formed into bricks and wheat into bread. Putting a different label on it like "source" or "creator" etc has no more real merit other than it may sound more sophisticated.

It's effectively (is it not?)  unknowable and unapproachable so we are left with guesswork (philosophy) and that's why we are participating in this thread, I guess.

Our existence seems to me like it couldn't have been any other way and yet to get to be how we are (and have been for millennia) seems impossible, because no natural systematic steps to get here, actually seem to do the job. Others on these forums, more capable than me in this subject, have highlighted these problems. 

Just before I make my best guess (is that what we are doing on this thread ?) I'd like to state my understanding of the intervention of Christ (in human history). I personally believe he was a messenger rather than a sacrificial lamb.

I don't personally believe he died in sacrifice to appease his 'father' and to prevent the world from being condemned to perish. That makes no sense to me and I suspect (as is fairly obvious arguably) that it most probably derives from the Jewish ideas of atonement and the slaughter of animals etc and was overlayed onto Christ's life as you might expect from beliefs of that era.  

So, if I had to make a best guess of how we arrived here. 

No beginning to the universe, because it's always existed. Evolution by design of man /aspects of animals and plants but not all (Typoz posted an interesting article on this recently)

Reincarnation (many lives) for 'everyone' so that 'every soul' (whatever a soul is, call it whatever you like, a piece of consciousness?) can experience 'being' every character/aspect of the human psyche, whatever is desired. I would hope it is therefore a perfecting process with a logical end point, (perfection--paradise?) but if that is the case, why has it not perfected itself already ? 

And if we have always existed, we surely must have achieved this nirvana (perfection) an endless amount of times already. So why do we have to lose it and start all over again. Is it because there is nothing else to do but partake of that never ending process? Doesn't sound satisfactory to me. Maybe it will when seen in it's full light. 

 And there lies the problem with my thesis which makes Brian's (for instance) more attractive. Maybe atheism likewise.  

I don't have any good answers at the moment but this did bring to mind a lively conversation I had with a friend of mine when I pushed him for greater understanding of what he'd experienced of the spiritual realms, our Atlantean past, etc. 

He told me that it would be quite hard to for him to communicate to me what he meant by Atlantis because our ways of understanding were so completely different. I asked him to elaborate and he said,

"You look at the myth of Apollo and think it is an allegory for the daily (seeming) path of the Sun. You look at the myth of Osiris and think it is an allegory for the seasons of agriculture.

 To me, however, the path of the sun in this world is an allegory for Apollo's journey across the sky and the cycles of agriculture are an allegory for the life, death, and resurrection of Osiris."

Back in the 1980s I read a few of the Seth books (channelled) by Jane Roberts. I was hugely impressed and, although I found out later that much of what I read was already known to those who have studied what is sometimes termed the "Perennial Philosophy", dating back to the ancients of middle and far east, it did change my understanding of life in a big way.

When it comes to the nature and evolution of life, there is one thing that I remember and that still sits well with my present worldview. Without looking up the quotes I'll paraphrase what I remember - while all consciousness is connected, there are groupings. Something like the hive mind concept but on a kind of higher plane, a whole species might have a group consciousness in which evolutionary adaptions are formulated and then there is a process by which they are manifested. Not having any education in evolutionary biology, that seems to me to be something that could be considered in conjunction with epigenetics - which seems to allow a much greater role for adaption over natural selection and random mutation. 

The mechanics of epigenetics at the cellular level are very interesting - I attended a talk on the subject a couple of years ago - and there is a concerted and highly specific information processing infrastructure at that level.  What is missing from the picture, however, is how this orchestration of the various components of this information processing and subsequent reaction and adaption to environmental conditions happens unless there is some kind of intelligence directing it. This, to my mind, is where consciousness interfaces with biology. How it does so I have no idea.

I'm on my own here.  I can only suggest that instead of seeking to debunk me, you seek to find if there is any value in anything I have said.  I am now out of this thread.

Actually I think many proponents wonder if there have been times when the "anomalous" was more common place.

Colin Wilson has gone through the existence of various mythic beings (elementals to vampires to werewolves) and the historical record is interesting. Same with odd objects in the sky. Unless people across history are liars, tricksters, and idiots there seems to be some more to reality than the usual idea of Planetary Formation -> Darwinian progress -> Humans.

So there seem to be at least three stages -> The Mythic that precedes "Enlightenment", The Magical where the "Enlightenment" begins its intrusions, and the Modern where the "Enlightenment" has spread across the Earth.

Of course it gets [a bit] tricky [to say the least], as even the ancient Greeks say the Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony was the last time the gods appeared directly. ("Once mortals and gods drank together in the Visible, now they drink together in the Invisible")

But the Mythic would seem to correspond to Eden, Atlantis, the Golden Age, etc...

It might be instructive to consider in moderate detail one of the major accomplishments of macro-evolution that ID contends must have been due to some form of outside intelligence. This might give some clues as to what level of intelligence, creativity and foresight can be attributed to whatever this designing source was, which then might constitute a clue as to the probable nature of this intelligence. 

And this survey into a little of the nitty gritty detail gives some idea of the magnitude of the biological design problem.

One example would be the phylum Arthropoda (present insects, spiders, crustaceans, etc.), which inexplicably to Darwinism appeared suddenly (as evolution goes) over a period of 10-20 million years at the beginning of the Cambrian period over 500 million years ago. This event was the sudden appearance of most of the complex animal body plans, and has been called the Cambrian Explosion. Like the other body plans, the body plan of the arthropods appeared with absolutely no simpler (developmental) pre-arthropods in the Precambrian, whereas neo-Darwinism predicts that there must have been a very long period of gradual development via RM + NS. Absolutely nothing of this supposed evolutionary history has been found in 150 years of digging, despite the presence of many sedimentary deposits that should have contained fossiliferous traces of this evolution.

This body plan which appeared far too quickly to be explainable by RM + NS consists of a very complex interconnected system of organ systems  consisting of multitudes of specialized tissues and cell types all working together in many specialized different biological mechanisms.

The major systems are the exoskeletal system, the muscular system, the respiratory system, the digestive system, the circulatory system, the reproductive system, and the nervous system. There are others also, like the secretory glandular and excretory systems.

The following capsule descriptions are of the sea-living forms that initially populated the Cambrian period.

The exoskeleton is a structure composed of several layers combining chitin and calcium carbonate. Since this is rigid, a molting subsystem had to also be incorporated to allow for growth. The exoskeleton is divided into plates over the body and through a series of cylinders around the appendages. At the joints between the plates and cylinders the exoskeleton is thin and flexible because it lacks the exocuticle and because it has to be folded.

The muscles, which attach to the inside of the exoskeleton, act together as an intricate lever system, a lever system as is also true in vertebrates.

The digestive system consists of a foregut, midgut region, and hindgut. In general, the midgut region is the principal site of enzyme production (which of course requires specialized cell types and corresponding tissues), and absorption of digested food. The enzymes may pass forward into the front part of the gut.

The respiratory system of the aquatic arthropods uses gills, which are outgrowths of the skin, which are covered by a thin gas-permeable layer of exoskeleton.

The circulatory system: this is an open system consisting of a dorsal (upper) heart and a system of arteries. The arteries deliver blood into tissue spaces (hemocoels), from which it eventually drains back to a large pericardial sinus surrounding the heart. A varying number of paired openings (ostia) are located along the length of the heart and permit blood to flow in when the valves are open. When the heart is contracting, closed valves prohibit the blood from flowing back and force it into the arteries of the tissues, from which it flows to other hemocoels. In the larger crustaceans, the blood then passes through the gills (where it becomes oxygenated) on its return to the heart. The blood of crustaceans contains the blue, oxygen-carrying pigment hemocyanin.

The arthropod nervous system including sensory organs consists of a dorsal brain and a ventral (underside), ganglionated longitudinal nerve cord (primitively paired in the early Cambrian forms) from which lateral nerves extend in each body segment. The sensory nerve endings are lodged in cuticular hairs (setae), peglike projections, cones, pits, or slits, which may occur in large numbers on antennae, mouthparts, joints, and leg tips. Some of the very first arthropods (related to trilobites) had complex compound eyes. Compound eyes are extremely effective in detecting motion. 

It should be noted that the compound eye is a very complex subsystem in itself consisting of an intricate array of lensed photosensors all connected together by optical nerves leading to a neural processing center able to detect shapes, motion and other characteristics of the composite image, and then decide whether friend or foe or food, etc.

The reproductive system: the two sexes are separate in arthropods; i.e., there are both male and female individuals. The paired sex organs, or gonads, of each sex are connected directly to ducts that open onto the ventral surface of the trunk.

Those creatures we call "aliens", Vallee's "neighbors", seem like a good guess...

Though it just isn't clear if these beings really have/make technology. Sometimes it seems like they do have amazing tech, other times it seems like it's akin to those weird dreams you have of cars/elevators/etc where the "technology" extends into outright bizarre functionality. (The car can drive underwater, the elevator teleports you to some fantastical place, etc.)

Sadly I haven't gone deep enough to make a good case either way.

In trying to tie the desire for this thread to explore possible sources of the apparent intelligent design of life to some specific examples I presented the case of the sudden appearance of the complex Arthropoda phylum body plan at the beginning of the Cambrian. 

Some sort of "bottom up" intelligence generated collectively by primitive organisms starting with bacteria has apparently been proposed - that such organisms collectively have some sort of mind-like capacities and even can apparently influence upcoming "random with respect to fitness" mutations or other genetic variations to be non-random and adaptive. Since there are only dim cognitive capacities in such organisms, this would seem to be invoking some sort of precognitive and psychokinetic psi capacities on the part of bacteria and other relatively simple organisms. Capacities that would have to be able to creatively conjure up ingenious design solutions and their corresponding genetic mutations, based on relatively simple informational processing by the primitive organisms.  

The following is a quote from one of Stephenw's  posts regarding this possible source of the design of life (at https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-d...7#pid41047 ).

"Information science measures, as fundamental and through derivatives, mutual information. 

To know something is to have access to "copies" of key information describing the object.  These matching information structures, measured in bits, are like answers to yes/no questions.  When an agent gets enough mutual information about his object, it may then further process this knowledge into understanding.  That is where it creates depth of context from past experience and can project where the object may be useful in the future.  It need not be a house in the suburbs, just where is the next food particle.

Knowing mutual information changes probabilities of an agent in responding with appropriate outlooks.  Understanding further, can increase mental outlook to active thoughts that organize and emit a response signal.  If mind is simply defined as the information processing system of a creature changing probabilities for activities its gain of mutual information and structured responses to its environments can be measured!

Bacteria can be observed as to the probability of interactions in an environment.  Its physicality can be measured and so can its informational circuits and responses.  Does it have detectors that are able to target food in a new locale?  Can it trigger a response that acquires a target for ingestion?"

I personally can't derive much insight into this proposed mechanism from this description, as to how it applies to an actual real-world example of apparent design that did actually happen somehow in the early Cambrian. How would these apparently vague ideas about a "bottom up" intelligence in primitive life specifically apply to the apparently intelligent process of some sort that must have originated the very complex and interlaced Arthropod body plan as I described it?

I personally can't derive much insight into this proposed mechanism from this description, as to how it applies to an actual real-world example of apparent design that did actually happen somehow in the early Cambrian. How would these apparently vague ideas about a "bottom up" intelligence in primitive life specifically apply to the apparently intelligent process of some sort that must have originated the very complex and interlaced Arthropod body plan as I described it?

Hmmm...is the ID argument that these design features cannot happen at all within a particular timescale, or that they can never happen without the influence of top-down design?

If the former, then some Psi ability seems easily plausible. If the latter, then maybe it depends on how smart the consciousness running the bacteria really is.

Hmmm...is the ID argument that these design features cannot happen at all within a particular timescale, or that they can never happen without the influence of top-down design?

If the former, then some Psi ability seems easily plausible. If the latter, then maybe it depends on how smart the consciousness running the bacteria really is.

Do you agree that it is completely obscure and even implausible how the informational processing theory outlined by Stephenw would have actually worked to come up with complex biological engineering designs such as the ones I outlined? If you don't agree, then I would appreciate a little guidance in the details. 

ID holds that there is overwhelming scientific evidence that these designs could not have originated via neo-Darwinistic processes within the time periods shown by the fossil record. But they did appear, so there must be some other true explanation. ID contends that the only concept that is viable is teleological - the intervention of high intelligence of some sort. The only source of complex engineering designs we can observe is human intelligence, which must therefore be considered a model (though it it is of course primitive compared to the levels that must be the source of the biological design of the major evolutionary innovations in the fossil record). 

ID recognizes that Darwinistic RM + NS is indeed pervasive in evolution, but holds that it is incapable of creating anything but slow microevolution of traits and characters whose basic system design must have been produced by intelligent design processes. As a matter of fact, Behe has demonstrated that RM + NS inevitably and inexorably degrades the genome, achieving adaptive effects only by breaking genes with an overall loss of genetic information. As a further matter of fact, micro-evolution of individual traits is the only type of change that has been actually observed to be produced by RM + NS. 

As to "the consciousness running the bacteria", it still is not clear to me if Stephenw's theory actually proposes that bacteria and other relatively simple organisms collectively exhibit consciousness. I think not, but he would need to clarify that. If such simple organisms are truly conscious, which I think would be necessary for this intelligence to be the biological design source, some sort of theory would be necessary to define that consciousness and explain how it originates in such simple organisms. I don't think there is one, or even anything preliminary. Of course, the Hard Problem of consciousness prohibits the simple assumption that some sort of distributed informational data processing could constitute this bacterial (or other organismal) consciousness, and also of course, there is still no understanding of even human consciousness.

Hmmm...is the ID argument that these design features cannot happen at all within a particular timescale, or that they can never happen without the influence of top-down design?

If the former, then some Psi ability seems easily plausible. If the latter, then maybe it depends on how smart the consciousness running the bacteria really is.

I find myself wondering about Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance and his stories about the rats in the maze and of the birds in the UK (and then mainland Europe) learning to peck open the tin-foil tops of milk bottles delivered to the doorstep (I remember that well from my youth).

The point of these examples was to show that generations of the same species, separated by geographical distance or disconnected by a time gap, can pick up where previous generations left off in the acquisition of skills that could not have been passed down the generations by direct heredity or by mimicking behaviour which would necessarily involve direct contact.

Perhaps someone here is more familiar with Sheldrake's theory but does it involve the kind of group (or species) consciousness that I mentioned in my previous post? This would be a kind of top-down intelligence but not in the sense of a dedicated designer. On trying to imagine the process, however, I can't help but think that a group intelligence evolving for a species must have access and collaboration with other groups and species and they all learn from each other.

The problem we face when trying to imagine these things is that we are conditioned by centuries of reductionism to think that everything is separate and isolated. My thoughts are leading in the opposite direction so that I see, more and more, a collaborative enterprise from the largest scale (the fine tuning of the universe) to the smallest (biological) scale - cellular cooperation and epigenetics, for example.