You obviously missed when z10 and I debated self-organization from randomness, which he didn't think was possible. And evidently you also don't know the difference between self-organization and miracles. BTW, thinking is optional, too.
The "scientific" mind promotes a concept of random acts of self organization, but rejects the concept of a designer programming seeming randomness into their design... Truly laughable...
You want to talk about snowflakes again? You sure have a bad memory. What we disagreed, was not whether there is randomness. We disagreed on whether randomness could be the cause of patterns. You were adamant that "random ignorant chance" could not have led to the complex patterns in biological systems we see today.
You can talk about your skill set as you mentioned it in this thread, snowflakes, or whatever gets you off... Who cares?
Shoe: >...And, again, why? Why competitive advantage >does a human being get from being super-intelligent? >Not much really C'mon Shoe, surely you jest with the above question. Why should one need to list the competitive advantages of intelligence? It seems pretty obvious. If I didn't know you (on and off this board) to be a pretty smart guy, I'd comment about those without intelligence not recognizing the it's advantages -- but since you have it, I won't. I'm truly mystified by your comment. JB
Well, in the case of the universe, you have random processes constrained by the parametric physical constants at the birth of the universe. So I'm not sure why you debated all of that, because you have Constrained Randomness if you will. And you can use whatever words you want if you don't like "self-organize" for some reason. Just don't avoid the issue with useless trash talking: the universe began as a singularity and then solid structures coalesced and eventually planets (after 3rd supernovae), etc. The point is that the coefficients such as the electromagnetic force, stong nuclear force, weak nuclear force and about forty others all were birthed at the singularity within very tight ranges tuned perfectly for creating this accretion that made life possible.
actually in some religions or some branches of some religions, it is stated that God created 'nothing' and 'everything that is' or you have God created darkness and light, it makes sense, one would claim the absence of light is darkness, but that can't be all of the story, for instance in electronics the absence of electric voltage is the zero bit, which even that requires to be defined by you to make use of, things don't happen on their own, you don't just create light and it's absence becomes darkness, nothing happens on it's own, you have to set it as darkness, or at least set the stage so that the absence of light is darkness when you imagine nothing, for you it is this darkness, but for darkness to prevail there must be space, and space is an existence for instance in kabbalah you have; "Ein Sof" 'the absolute', manifested as 'God', (note that since 'the absolute' is boundless this is not talking about a period in time, or a specific connection, it is merely trying to give you an idea), and God created the Universe and everything within, darkness and light, and from him came the 'living God', God, the living God gave man of his soul http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=357&letter=E
Thx for being merciful as I can see that I was confusing. But I was serious. Yes, intelligence is a general asset for survival. What I meant was: what is the purpose of being SUPER-intelligent? By that I mean, what good does it do for us to be so advanced mentally that we can have a Super Sensory, Surround Sound 3D experience such as an NDE or OOB? You can't just argue this is a byproduct of survival in the jungles of Africa. No jungle creature or savannah creature needs to go on a California Adventure Super Ride - it doesn't help him one bit. So how did that get there? What good does it do an ape or hominid to be able to lucidly dream for that matter? Same thing with music: why does some music stimulate us to almost sexual ecstacy? Why is a triad so exotic? Why is I, IV, V so universal? Why do we respond so strongly to bridges and dissonance with resolution. Why is some music so romantic? Why is some music so heart pounding, testosterone producing?Why does music have a spiritual component to it so often around the globe? None of it makes any sense if you try to answer it using natural selection and genetic migration. Of course, the Christian has an answer: music was from the beginning and Satan was actually originally Chief Musician if you will. So this was undoubtedly programmed into Adam.