One of humanity’s greatest problems, and the one that has led us to creating the massive ecological crisis we now face, is the hubris in believing that we are the most intelligent species on the planet. Humans are definitely smart, no doubt about that, but with intelligence comes wisdom, and that part is lacking or more correctly, not practiced. After all, even a dog doesn’t willingly crap in its living area. We do have self-awareness and the ability to respond by predicting and choosing what we do, while most other species react instinctively. But that is smart and not often intelligent. Before you get upset about humanity’s dominance in the world let’s consider some basics.
If, as I alluded to in the last post, we accept that the universe is composed of consciousness, then everything is consciousness, although a rock has a very low level of consciousness, and plants a little more above that. Humans have self-awareness and self-determination, although after spending a few minutes on social media, I often wonder if that is true since mindlessness seems scarily common. Intelligence is the ability to apply knowledge and skills in the betterment of the species but I would add that while other species do it unconsciously, humans have somehow forgotten what it is that creates a better world and instead focused on hedonistic desires as an endpoint – and that only by a minority of people in the industrialized countries. That might be OK if we also focused on living well such that everything benefited, including all of the planet. Recall the old maxim that 20% of the world’s human population creates 85% of the world’s ecological problems through lifestyle choices, e.g., material consumerism.
When I state that nature is more intelligent than humanity, I refer to that in the biological sense. An oft quoted number is that a banana has 36,000 genes, while a protozoan has 20-30,000 genes compared to a humans 20-25,000 genes. So, it isn’t about numbers of genes, but it is about adaptability. And that brings us to the dogma of Darwinian theory – the notion that individual random mutations over time will somehow create highly organized and specific changes. (Natural selection works fine, but it is short term and demonstrable.) Anyone who has done software programming knows that completely random mutations never produce better programs – at least not in the real world. And the same is true of biological mutations. Evolutionary biologists (e.g., Barbara McClintock and Lynn Margulis) have shown that evolutionary mutations in biology are not random. They are highly organized and follow specific structures and mechanisms.
Biologists, like Bruce Lipton, have clearly shown us that adaptation is epigenetic (evolution by modification of gene expression rather than alteration of the genetic code itself – see earlier post, Health – Sickcare 2 {January 2018}). That is genes actively respond to changes in the environment and do not simply dictate what is coded from birth – it is bi-directional and not unidirectional as biological dogma states. And not only that, the genetic response involves reorganization of what was once through an inviolable code.
When organisms are under stress, they massively re-arrange their DNA. A protozoan under stress can make 100,000 edits to its genome in 12 hours and re-structure its whole physiology. This creates numerous complex mutations of which some allow uniquely adapted of the species to digest a nutrient they couldn’t before. The ones not adapting specifically enough would simply die off under the ecological stress – hence survival of the most adapted. This seems to be true of all species. Organisms are re-arranging to find adaptations that are going to work best. Most of the time they fail. Some of the time they succeed. This readily explains punctuated equilibrium – the hypothesis that evolutionary development is marked by isolated episodes of rapid speciation between long periods of little or no change – as opposed to slow minor mutational change that cannot explain fast speciation. Remember we’re not talking natural selective pressures (e.g., Galapagos finches) but rapid adaptation in extreme conditions.
Natural selection occurs when competition is brutal. To give an example in human terms, Google and Facebook are giant natural selection machines. Millions of businesses succeed or fail based on their ability to get those social media clicks. Online advertising is a 24/7/365 evolutionary competition that goes into an epigenetic kind of mode. When you create ads, you never know in advance what is going to work best. You have to just put a lot of stuff out there and the market forces test it out. The marketplace (selection) is the final arbiter. Entrepreneurs design new businesses and new products and put new ideas in the marketplace. Keep in mind that business is just an extension of biology. Business is how all of us eat. Also notice that selection all by itself doesn’t create anything at all. The advertisers generate the new information, and the best way to create that information is to derive your ideas through feedback from the environment. This is exactly what cells do.
But, to back-track just a little here before we get deeper in consciousness. We now have mind-boggling inconsistencies from science since Newton and his colleagues thrived on the Mechanistic paradigm that the universe was like a complex clockwork system that could be defined by simple mathematics and as such was predictable and understandable. The great separation during the medieval Renaissance was separation of science from simple faith. However, science with its new set of dogma’s is fast becoming a new kind of religion – scientism.
Even Darwin stated in his Origin of Species that, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” With this statement, Charles Darwin provided a criterion by which his theory of evolution could be shown as incomplete. Evolution explains a lot of what has gone on with how species adapted to changing conditions over the past many hundreds of millions of years, but it has many things that have occurred within species that are not addressed Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which so many people and biologists hold central to their beliefs. It has been so conditioned into us through schooling it is rarely questioned. Not unlike many historical facts that are merely myths masquerading as facts.
The current dogma logic is simple: evolution is a gradual process in which slight modifications produce advantages for survival, however, slight modifications cannot produce complex structures in a short amount of time. Yes, there is punctuated equilibrium and a step-by-step process may gradually build up a systems complexity and modify complex structures, but it cannot produce them suddenly and in complete functioning form.
Biochemist, Michael Behe, claims to have shown exactly what Darwin claimed would abolish the central role of the theory of evolution – the concept of ‘irreducible complexity.’ In simple terms, this idea applies to any system of interacting parts in which the removal of any one part destroys the function of the entire system. An irreducibly complex system, then, requires each and every component to be in place before it will function – not successive non-lethal mutations building up one at a time to suddenly create the whole.
Behe, He claims that there is some ‘intent’ at work. Don’t run off for the bible declaring ‘’Intelligent Design’ by a wise, grey haired, white, male being sat on a big throne in the sky. The intention is much more subtle and surprising and involves some form of innate intelligence and not intellect. Yet, how would you explain that complexity like a human eye could be achieved by natural selection with singular mutations over long periods of time? Biologists say given enough time and infinite possibilities of mutational options meeting up at the same spot at the same time would explain it. Statistically this would take – infinity, not just the 600 million years since the pre-Cambrian Explosion. And then it happened not just once but many times since!! Evolution happens, that is a fact, but there is something else going on that mainstream science cannot even begin to fathom. The answer to all life thriving is about natural mechanisms that stem from a universal consciousness. Again, an answer lies on the edges and outside of the box.
To Be Continued ………………..
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