Scientists assemble the chemicals required for life and wait expectantly for
something "emerge". So far nothing has. No one can even define what the
missing ingredient for life might be. Perhaps we will never completely
understand life, but we might achieve something better than our present
understanding if we stop thinking of life as composed of bits of matter.
Water is inanimate matter. It always runs down hill. If it were alive, some
of it would be attempting to climb up hill, and occasionally succeeding.
Inanimate matter just sits there. Life explores. A dead body is inert. A
living organism exercises choice. A computer exercises the choices dictated
by a "programmer". Life initiates it's own choices. Those choices might be
somewhat predictable as following common behavior patterns, but the
possibility of novelty and surprise always exists in life.
When it comes to instincts and behaviors, things get murky. Biologists
aren't quite sure when a behavior becomes a genetically inherited instinct
rather than a habit acquired after birth. Sociobiologists assume everything,
including rape, altruism and homosexuality are inherited, and spin fanciful
tales describing how such traits arose by "random mutation and natural
selection". Are instincts really "things" encoded in the genome? If not,
how might they be passed on from generation to generation? One might give a
Darwinian explanation of instinctive fear of snakes as follows: such a fear
arose randomly, and those animals possessing the instinct survived, and those
who didn't perished (presumably due to snake bite) -- or else as a result of
not fearing snakes they didn't leave sufficient progeny. Such an
explanation makes Darwinism sound silly, and the safest thing for a biologist
to do is assume a lofty, stern expression, and declare, "That is a over
simplification!". (Obviously too complicated for anyone but a Darwinist to
understand.)
To most of us it appears obvious that fear of snakes was never a "random
mutation", but was the result of numerous individuals having bad experiences
with snakes. Any human instinct can be overcome with free will. We can
overcome our fear of snakes and we can suppress our maternal instincts. We
choose whether to seek safety or risk danger in the interest of a loved one
or moral principle. If men once felt an "instinctive" need to dominate
women, that can and is gradually changing by individuals choosing to act
otherwise. The change in men's attitude toward women could never be
explained by all the dominating type men perishing or not leaving enough
offspring. It is far more likely such changes in "instinctive" behavior are
due to the accumulation of individual choices somehow becoming part of our
genetic make up. If enough individuals "choose" to override an instinct, a
new "instinct" would gradually emerge. Maybe choice and creativity are a
characteristic of all life. (Rupert Shelldrake even suggests that all the
laws of nature are entrenched "habits".)
Common opinion often holds that animals have no choices. Can we insist free
will is unique to us, Homo Sapiens, and declare choices of the rest of nature
to be random? Animal "instincts" originated somewhere. Why couldn't an
animal be suddenly overcome with a burst of creativity and try out a new
nest-building material or a new vocalization? Why couldn't such innovations
"catch on"? If we grant some small measure of creativity to animals, where
do we draw the line? Only mammals? Only vertebrates? Do we deny the
possibility of any degree of creativity to worms? Bacteria pursue, devour
and flee from each other. Can we categorically deny all measure of
creativity or choice to single-celled organisms forming symbiotic
relationships? An unconscious organism exerts no conscious choices, but all
the biological systems within that organism continue to exercise the choices
necessary to maintain it. Is the genome alive? If the immune system
exercises choice, why not the genome? Can we be certain that any event
ascribed to chance might not also include choice as part of the equation - if
it involves life?
It is apparent to many of us that choice, creativity, "mind", free will,
whatever you call it, can interact physically with the "read" world -- can
exert an effect upon the physical realm of molecules and atoms. Biofeedback
is an obvious example. We can declare meiosis, mitosis and fertilization to
be random, but I suspect if we look closer we could find evidence of rational
choices. As design proponents predicted, we are discovering that little, if
anything, in life is composed of "junk". Darwinists might view life as an
accidental, thrown-together assemblage, but when we look carefully, we
usually find a purpose for each component of life.
As we have come to understand the incredible complexity of the cell, people
have compared the cell to a huge factory manufacturing complex products such
as proteins. I fear we are still thinking of that factory as run by robots.
A better analogy might be a factory run by live workers with their
predictable tendency to not behave as robots. Maybe a ribosome occasionally
comes up with a way to increase production. Voila! Mutation. It seems
apparent to many of us that life is designed by intelligence, but that
intelligence need not necessarily be some detached presence. Intelligence
might be the quintessential property of life itself. And if someone wants
to call that intelligence God, why should anyone object?
Bertvan
http://members.aol.com/bertvan
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