Lewis Black on evolution

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcJvkAdydnQ

too funny

Dragon video.

I will buy one of these with my tax returns next year.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-576 ... ing-robot/

But this dragon couldn't exist.

Obviously it breathes fire, and that's a no-no, though creatures like the bombadier beatle give some indication of what it COULD do, if sent down the right evolutionary path.

The main problem with this dragon is that it has six limbs. Two front legs, two back legs, and two wings.

There is no terrestrial vertebrate lineage with six limbs. So even though there are a mess of dinosaurs we've never discovered, there is almost certainly no example which would fit the model in the video.

As for dragons with wings attached to front legs? How about Quetzalcoatlus?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus

As products of blind evolutionary forces, do homo sapiens have purposeful intent?

Predators intend to eat us. Their intention is scary! I intend not to be eaten.

Ant:
do homo sapiens have purposeful intent?

Yes.

Humans have invented purpose and intent, or attributed the same for a wide variety of things.

johnson1010 wrote:

Ant:
do homo sapiens have purposeful intent?

Yes.

Humans have invented purpose and intent, or attributed the same for a wide variety of things.

Fair enough.

And what particular evidence has convinced you purposeful intent did not exist until humans "invented" it?

I don't want to imply that only humans have invented purpose and intent. Lets say instead that intelligence has invented purpose and intent. You were asking about humans, so that's what i talked about, but you are right.

Many organisms which are able to plan would perform some task with a purpose in mind. This is not at all limited to humans, nor would we have been the first to invent any purpose.

as to what convinces me that intelligence is required to enact a purpose, well it's definitional, really. Which is to say, my understanding of the word. You need an intelligence to assign a purpose to something.

As i've said before, you and I might say the "purpose" of a table leg is to hold up the table top and that might have some validity, because it is an object which was fashioned into a specific shape by an intelligence exactly for that purpose.

But what would it mean to say that the purpose of a rock was to hold down a peice of paper? If you've got a rock sitting on your desk as a paper weight, then you have assigned a purpose to it. But the fact that it's heavy is not due to your intention to use it as a paper weight. The mass of the rock is just a property it has.

So like that, having iron in our blood is not because it serves a purpose, but because it has benefitial properties which have been exploited. Iron doesn't exist for that purpose.

I don't want to imply that only humans have invented purpose and intent. Lets say instead that intelligence has invented purpose and intent. You were asking about humans, so that's what i talked about, but you are right.

Many organisms which are able to plan would perform some task with a purpose in mind. This is not at all limited to humans, nor would we have been the first to invent any purpose.

So I've underlined some key words I'd like you to expand on a bit.

Define intelligence.

If many organisms as you say are/were able to perform tasks with a "purpose" in mind before the rise of Hominidae intelligence, then purpose existed long before ours arose, correct?

Fungus is an organism. Do fungi have "purpose"? Are they "intelligent" in a sense because they perform certain, however limited, tasks, or would you characterized their tasks as blind "intelligence"?

Here's kind of a fun question:
If evolution by natural selection is the rule of thumb throughout the cosmos, might a species billions of years more evolved than us consider our purpose directionless?
If is highly probable that life evolved elsewhere and that it is perhaps billions of years or senior, right?

You need an intelligence to assign a purpose to something.

Doesn't it follow that Your purpose needed an Intelligence to assign it to you?

We have a closet theist here, people!!


:mbounce:

Doesn't it follow that Your purpose needed an Intelligence to assign it to you?

His purpose was assigned by himself. In light of goals, we have purpose. If we have a goal that requires using a tool, we declare that tool to have a purpose.

Other animals have purpose as well, because they have goals(even if they can't articulate them). The origin of these goals can be traced to game theory. The if/then algorithmic behaviors that have evolved over eons. Most organisms have an overriding "purpose" to procreate and flourish, as dictated by natural selection. Any organism lacking that goal would have a lesser chance of surviving. There are a host of lesser goals as well, which may sometimes be of higher importance than procreation(it's algorithmic). Eating, running in fear, drinking, flying north for the winter, nesting, etc.