Not the Social Affairs Unit, again...

Just because something isn't worth doing doesn't mean it's worth doing badly and telling everyone else about it.

In the scientific community, egregious and tortured analogies are considered especially heinous. On the Internet, these analogies are made by an elite group known as the Social Affiars Unit. These are their stories.

Something not-too-different from this silly hypo has in fact already occurred -- the discovery in 1900 of the Antikythera Mechanism. This is a remarkable ancient Greek gearing/clockwork device that seemed far too advanced for the ancient Greeks to have designed and built (based on everything we knew about their technology prior to the Mechanism's discovery). Does Harris think the response from scientists and archaeologists was "Obviously we know less about Greek technology than we thought, let's see if we can figure out what it was designed to do" or "We must find a way to explain how this thing evolved biologically -- maybe it's a kind of sponge"?

Next time SAU pulls this kind of stunt, Sean, I'm going to remember your "Shorter Social Affairs Unit". It'll save me some typing.

Now, if archaeologists had come across some mechanical Replicators, they could say that such a device could have arisen naturally and evolved to its current state despite being made of substances (refined metals and such) that we usually associated with artifacts.

That is, before they were eaten alive and their substance used to form more Replicators.

The question becomes: are viruses living things, or machines?

Next question: is being self-replicating sufficient to make a machine 'alive'?

Next question: what do we actually mean by 'self-replicating'?

Final question: what do you think the chances are of any IDists even considering any of the previous questions?

What do they call this one, category conflation fallacy? In this case, conflating what is generated by the "biolgical" world with what is generated by the "cultural" or "technological" world.

Of course, Nature embraces both worlds, and they both arise out of it. Nature produced us. We produced the laptop. In some overarching sense, therefore, even the laptop is a natural object, generated by natural forces that we already understand or have excellent prospects of understanding. The lines between biological and technological blur at their boundaries (no matter how often we encounter this boundary-blurring phenomenon, the utility of maintaining separate categories for the vast majority of items that fall well withing the bounds of the categories remains unchallenged...). Here one could discuss the "culturally" transmitted behavior of different bands of chimps, orcas, and magpies, and the communicative, tool-making, and display behaviors of various non-human species.

None of that means that the laptop is alive ("biological" as opposed to "technological") or that we expect it to suddenly stop displaying screens of pixels and to start sniffing about for the nearest of its "kind" instead, any more than we would expect some perverse congregation of snuffling laptops to suddenly start spewing out little laptops which--with generous provision of laptop TLC and nutrition--would then grow up to become full-fledged "working" laptops (in between bouts of laptop estrus).

(Not that we can't conceive of a day when the bio-techno boundaries may become even more blurred, in which self-replicating widgets might cross the border from fiction to fact.)

That these are all such stupefyingly obvious points forces one to wonder which moron-hatchery spawned this particular blogopod.

This is actually fairly similar to the most recent thread on Uncommon Descent. Which is, of course, the watchmaker thing again.

If an alien found human engineering on Mars Would they be able to detect products of intelligence and deduce that these objects had not evolved from the surrounding materials by chance?

http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/830

I actually didn't think of it like you wrote it: That there would be no reason to apply biology to it unless it exhibited signs of life.

I'd actually call this a pretty good topic for them. It sparked something that looked like constructive debate and I believe that this "thought experiment" worked out.

That's not a parable. It's breathtakingly awful word salad. In what possible way is that convoluted drek an improvement over Paley's nice, clean little "watch on the heath" story? I can't even tell what Harris was TRYING to do, because the various references don't line up with each other. Any worse and it could be included in the "Left Behind" series.

A certain section of the British right really, really want to be the American right. I'm not surprised they're starting to lap up creationism:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/000756.html

Years ago I noted that some military groups used the word "unit" not referring to any organization, but instead to the human male sexual apparatus, meaning "something that acts without thinking."

It gives a whole new light on "Social Affairs Unit."

It's like a high school composition; look around the room and find something to write about. What's this thing I'm typing on? Oh, yeah, that's it. Now, the teacher's pet wrote something about a watch, so I'll just adjust that analogy. That should be good for an "A".

funny though...many years ago taking "archeology for cultural anthropologists" with Tom McGovern at the CUNY Grad Center...McGovern described a similar situation where the courts of 15th/16th europe would bring out their collection of oddities: roman coins, which displayed the court's sophistication...perhaps ancient weapons left over from roman or viking conquests...and always oddly shaped stones that could not have been created by nature. Were these tools elf shot? the remains of a lightning bolt? of course, they were stone tools (mousterian and such...i suppose).

And we've come a long way from Spencer, Morgan and tylor...or white and steward...no human is ever going to look at a tool and say its evolution.

lord, what fools these mortals be.

So... um, how do the evolutionists think the laptop evolved, when it doesn't displayany affinity to known forms of life an, more importantly, doesn't appear tobe able to reproduce?

I remember reading a short story once in which a manned expedition to Pluto discovered that its surface was covered in small, arthropod-like creatures that had Helium-3 blood. They crawled around, ingested various minerals, attempted to reproduce themselves, and went dormant when they entered sunlight because the heat ruined their superconductivity.

If they were the only forms of life (no bacteria or smaller entities, etc.) how could we determine whether those critters evolved on Pluto or came from elsewhere (possibly even designed by extraterrestrial intelligences)?

I suspect it's not possible. Without out evidence of ancestry, we couldn't even determine whether given features were astounding unlikely to be the result of evolutionary change even if we learned every detail of the organisms' biology, and it's unlikely (at best) that there are any features that cannot be produced by natural selection and mutation.

So many people continue to regard 'evolved by natural selection' and 'arose by chance' as synonymous. Being that ignorant is cause for deep embarassment, the kind Mark Twain said you never forget...But, I suppose, if you don't know any better, you'll probably won't know what's to be embarassed about.

Harris has made a pretty strong case that the human brain is not as well evolved as some people like to think. Hyperadaptationism refuted.

What Sean wrote is eerily familiar - it must be a cultural references I am missing. Help?

Steviepinhead: Laptop estrus is a great idea. Is that why once a month every computer does silly things, like freeze?

Dude, I think you're getting completely the wrong end of the stick here. The only sane way I can see to interpret his analogy is that he's invented the reproducing laptop, and this is a gentle way of introducing it to the world.

All hail Harris' technical might!

Mr. Foley's clever...whatever it is is based on the opening of the various Law and Order series. "In the criminal justice system etc. etc." Of course he made a mistake by not including the all important "DUNT DUNT!" noise heard at the end of the one on the original Law and Order.

Walter M. Miller used a similar plot device in "A Canticle for Liebowitz," but in his SF novel, the characters recognized the artifacts as remnants of a lost civilization.

Miller's book made the NYT bestseller list. Harris' story will likely disappear as an example of Sturgeon's Law.

If they were the only forms of life (no bacteria or smaller entities, etc.) how could we determine whether those critters evolved on Pluto or came from elsewhere (possibly even designed by extraterrestrial intelligences)?

It might be tough to determine whether they evolved on Pluto or not (although certainly if the chemical contents of Pluto's atmosphere ended up being found to be incorporated in these arthropods' own chemical makeup, it would be in theory possible to determine how long they had been there)...

But, REGARDLESS: It is pretty obvious to anyone who knows anything about biology - that evolved life is anything but efficient or designed-looking when being examined at either the molecular or structural levels. And, there are innumerable examples of this so-called backwards-ass design within humans, and in general within Earth's own biosphere.

In other words, an engineer would not, in general, design a machine in the piecewise manner of Evolution.

"That's not a parable. It's breathtakingly awful word salad. In what possible way is that convoluted drek an improvement over Paley's nice, clean little "watch on the heath" story?"

It's an "improvement" because it is just so convoluted, muddled and confusing. That makes it harder for the readers recognize as breathtakingly stupid.

Or that's what Harris is hoping, at least.

Notice also that postulating "intelligent design" also clams shut our investigations of creativity and intelligence by insinuating that such matters are a mystery and supernatural. (All part of the ruining of psychology by postulating psychoneural dualism, I guess.)

A slightly more interesting hypothetical might be how IDists would react if we were visited by an advanced electromechanical alien that seemed to us to be some kind of ultra-sophisticated robot, but which insisted on a theology in which it evolved from silicon-based life-forms, and furthermore it claimed to be visiting earth to check out how one of its several-billion-year-long experiments in carbon-based life-oids was turning out.

Regarding the Watch/watchmaker anology, has anyone ever taken the line of thinking that if there were several Watches found on the beach, it might have come about naturally? And that if a grandfather clock floated in, that might lend additionaly support, or a serious of water clocks, and a few sundials, might be even more support?

Not the most succinct question, but I think you get the idea.

A slightly more interesting hypothetical might be how IDists would react if we were visited by an advanced electromechanical alien that seemed to us to be some kind of ultra-sophisticated robot, but which insisted on a theology in which it evolved from silicon-based life-forms...

The science fiction author James Morrow wrote a short story about a planet full of robots (built by humans and sent there for reasons I've forgotten) that had devloped an evolutionary religion and venerated the works of Darwin as scripture. A couple of human scientists ("science missionaries," I think they call themselves) visit the planet, try to explain to the robots that they were designed and built by humans rather than descending from a common robot ancestor (and have some factory schematics to back it up), and are hounded as heretics. I believe this one is in an anthology called Bible Stories for Adults.

One of the funniest answers to my article contained the following statement � If they lacked chemistry and mechanical typewriters how in the hell could they have philsophy?� I did not know that Socrates or Aristotle had a typewriter, but we Brits are ignorant fellows. Leaving this astonishing statement to one side within fifty years I am sure we will be able to produce designed self reproducing animals. I was the first journalist to report on an early cloning experment at Roslin in Edinburgh.(Spectator 28 August 1987) This is where Dolly the Sheep, the first cloned animal was produced. (Edinburgh is in a country called Scotland which has a common border with England. England is nowhere near Iraq.) If one of your over excited correspondents were to excavate one of these designed self reproducing animals, would he or she consider it evolved or an archaeological arterfact? (I don�t know If I should use these long words, but I am sure Americans have dictionaries.)

Ask Harris to replace the watch in Paley's parable - or the mysterious box in his own story - with a Babylon 5 "data-crystal". Would the 19th century walker on the English heath (not beach or forest) or the scholars in his medieval kingdom recognise it as a highly-advanced data-storage device or would they simply regard it as a naturally-occuring crystal?

I don't know -- I can't find "arterfact" in my dictionary, so now I'm hopelessly confused.

" If one of your over excited correspondents were to excavate one of these designed self reproducing animals, would he or she consider it evolved or an archaeological arterfact?"
.
And that is an interesting question. That would have been a good - well, "what if," if not a parable. The silliness with the computer doesn't really work - there's no sensible reason to assume that it was in fact an evolved organism, rather than an artifact. You've loaded it against the 'arrogant evolutionary priesthood' in an unnecessary and unfair way.

Now, I'm not sure if you are trying to get at how people will absorb all sorts of things into a religious framework, with the computer becoming the focus of a cult and evolution providing people with a philosophy/moral system. That would be fairly clever, although somewhat at right-angles to reality again. If you aren't, then this next bit:

"As a result evolution underpins the basis of peoples' understanding of who they are and how they should live. Since they learnt they arose by chance men and women have given up believing in a creator and understand there is no higher hand."

is way off. This is just the same old boring caricature of evolution, version D (evolution's just another word for nothing left to lose - it's atheism, claims we just got here by blind, meaningless chance, is trying to surplant religion.) To greater or lesser degree, this sort of claim could be made about any advance in the last few thousand years that explained things previously attributed to the Gods (epilepsy is an illness, not a kind of divine madness?! The horror, the horror!) The whole religion/science thing is a wee bit complicated, but nothing about science says God doesn't exist, and many religious people - and entire denominations, etc - don't have a problem with evolution. Evolution says that given what we know about living creatures, their history and current diversity is best explained by (and so on). If you're not crazily, geekishly in love with science and the natural world, this is a bit dull, I suppose.

"and how they should live"
Silly buggers. This is largely like having gravity underpin your understanding of how you should live. It might well be helpful in some very specific areas (don't jump off tall cliffs), but beyond that . . . And nobody really says anything different. Even the evpsych people aren't really arguing this. Now, there's some wiggle room here - people might take evolutionary facts - we're kin to everything from eagles to E. coli, etc., even little ugly creatures are the result of a long, long process - and apply them to certain areas of ethical behavior - environmentalism, etc. It's science. Germ theory will tell you how to live in regards to washing your hands and not sneezing on people - beyond that, you're on your own (or not).

" Since they learnt they arose by chance"
Ahhhhhrrrrgh!
Yes, yes, meaningless chance, therefore life is meaningless and man is just a monkey. Bullpucky. Besides the vast philosophical/theological jumps - not just chance.

Take little plastic discs, with one side black and one side white. Toss them up onto the air onto a white sheet of paper. Black or white side up? - that's chance (ie, mutations that affect coat color in little rodents of some sort). Now model what happens to white and black-furred little plump whatevers as they scurry across predator-filled winter wonderland after a few generations of living, dying, and breeding. Very orderly. Of course, that's not the core of the complaint, which is that it doesn't say anything about God doing it. Some folks will point out that it doesn't say anything about God not doing it, and that if someone created the universe, it's quite possible the dice are loaded in their favor - but science can't really help us there . . .

"men and women have given up believing in a creator and understand there is no higher hand.""
Again, why? Sure, that's one possibility, although one might point out that atheism predates evolutionary theory, and in most cases evolution only supports or contributes to such a stance. Another is made manifest in the many people/denominations who believe in God and accept modern biological science. After all, since we're dealing in theology, why couldn't God have used evolution? The idea of a God who keeps fussing with his creation (in terms of natural processes) is very pre-scientific, y'know?

Take the Flood bit. Whether or not it's based on the historical flooding of the Black Sea region, it has a marvelous just-so story inside it - why we have rainbows. Think of that: after every rain a colorful sign reminding us of God's promise not to drown the world again. And then that Newton comes along and spoils everything with his fancy-smancy optics! So, toss out the Bible? (PZ, stop cheering and shouting "Yes! Yes!" - I'm trying to make a point!)

Anyway, back to the replicators or whatever we invent a few decades from now. Let's say an earlier human civilization did so already, before their land sank into the sea (or maybe an alien race dropped some off while making people build pyramids). Would we recognize remains or living examples as designed creatures? If they were very different from other life, that would certainly a clue that something was going on. More interestingly, unless they reproduced through flawless replication, they would evolve. Hm,

Cross-posted to SAU.

Come on I want an answer to this question. It is very simple. If a fossil of a self reproducing designed animal was discovered in a few thousand years time - something we will be able to make fairly easily in fifty years - how would you distinguish it from a fossil of an animal that had evolved by natural selection? (this is an argument similar to Turing�s test for artificial intelligence.)

On a slightly different tack. On this side of the Atlantic we are puzzled why Americans get so wound up about religion. In Britain few go to church, very few people hold any strong religious beliefs and the Church of England is a joke, so we are not at all worried by ID. If it was taught daily in our schools, few would worry about it. Ideas stand by evidence, not by the sort of anti religious passions shown on your site, themselves, it seems to many reading your blogs from here, representing a sort of Darwinian religion.

The Pluto SF story is by Larry Niven, called "Wait it Out"

Such an organism would be recognizable if it were not designed to fit into the nested hierarchy of all other life on earth: if it were chimeric in some substantial way, or contained a preponderance of proteins explicitly and independently designed, rather than borrowed for others.

" how would you distinguish it from a fossil of an animal that had evolved by natural selection?"
By the "Made in China" label.

(After all, by that time, high school here will probably consist of 18 competing versions of creationism - oh yeah, and a controversial math graduation requirement - students will have to pass a course covering basic arithmetic. . . .)

" On this side of the Atlantic we are puzzled why Americans get so wound up about religion. In Britain few go to church, very few people hold any strong religious beliefs and the Church of England is a joke, so we are not at all worried by ID"

So in other words, you decided to jump into a dispute in another country with a different culture, having admitted you don't really understand what's going on, and you jump in with a piece that reads as if it was pro-ID, something which doesn't worry you over there, but is clearly a topic of great concern over here. Nice.
(Granted, sometimes an outsider can bring fresh new insights, a different angle, or welcome clarity.)

In his quite readable piece on the Dover trial in Feb. edition of Harper's, Matthew Chapman (Darwin's great-great-great grandson) writes about how, growing up in England "evolution was fully accepted; after moving to America in the Eighties he "discoverd that many Americans not only rejected the theory of evolution; they reviled it." Perhaps the " anti religious passions shown on [this] site," besides being a reflection of our host's brand of muscular atheism, also have something to do with the fact that we have folks running around the country teaching kids that evolution is bad and wrong and that any time their teacher mentions it they should shout "Were you there?!" at them, that a recent survey found about ~30% of teachers feeling pushed to drop/de-emphasize evolution, with 19% not daring to say the word "evolution," so as to not draw attention to it - and so on, and so on, and so on . . .

Just maybe? Ya think?

WHy do creationists never wonder how awesomely complex structures such as crystals and snowflakes can appear? The time element is the only real difference between them, and life.

As Dawkins said, "It is grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvious that if Darwinism were a 'theory of chance', it wouldn't work."

Even if biological structures DID evolve "by chance", it might also be too complex to have been CREATED, either...

�So in other words, you decided to jump into a dispute in another country with a different culture, having admitted you don't really understand what's going on, and you jump in with a piece that reads as if it was pro-ID, something which doesn't worry you over there, but is clearly a topic of great concern over here. Nice�

No that is unfair. Most British people fully understand the unique problem America has with its law that forbids the teaching of religion in schools, and why given the disasterous effects of religious intolerance in Europe in the centuries preceeding the founding of America there was a need to ban it in the newly born America. But in Europe, since those times, religion has been largely sanitised - its teeth drawn by science. We do have fundamentalists, but in general, especially in Britain, religion is merely civic ritual. It is not that thinkers here are all Godless, readers of this web site might read Erwin Schrodinger�s (of the cat) book �What is life? �to understand that, but we are cynical about religion so we have turned it into a show like opera (Princess Diana�s funeral was much more fun than worrying about God�s wrath) It seems to me that in the US debate over evolution your preoccupation with fundamentalism is proving a tar baby. P Z Myers comment is therefore to be welcomed (about the nested hierarchy of life). This sort of comment advances the argument much better than abuse or accusations of bad faith.

Critics of my parable "Darwin's Silver Box" are either being short sighted or disingenuous. Stripped of its religious and political overtones, which is why the argument over evolution versus intelligent design generates so much heat in the US (but not here in Britain where we are not so exercised by religion) the real problem is how to distinguish artificial objects from natural ones. This is much more difficult than it first appears. For example it was obvious to a 20th century European that an aeroplane was man made, but to a New Guinea native in 1939 it was equally obvious it was a bird, a natural object. Villagers often used to try and feed them after they landed.

We think we could never fall for such a trap but at the end of the 20th century with the coming of genetically engineered animals in the west - for example Dolly the Sheep ? which are partly evolved and partly designed, the distinction between artificial and natural has begun to fade. Moreover by 2050 if the human race survives we should be able to create simple self reproducing animals which while appearing natural, are totally designed, and by 2100, given the speed of neurological and genetic research, perhaps animals which can outhink us. At this stage we will be in the same bind as the New Guinean villager. We will not be able to tell which is evolved and which is designed. One argument against this (P Z Myers) is that you might be able to tell an object was designed because the arrangement of its nested proteins (its bricks as it were) was different. But say it was found on another planet (or came from one) where animals evolved along a different path ?

This begs the question, that while it is perfectly possible that human beings are the product of natural selection, how do we know that in our primitive state as cells million years ago we were not the creation of creatures who themselves were either designed or evolved ? There is simply no way of telling at which stage evolution gave way to intelligent design, if it did at all. Or the reverse, if intelligent design gave way to evolution. Moreover we are ourselves intelligent designers, we now build biochemical machines, so nature can create such artefacts, using creatures who might themselve be the result of natural selection.

Nor is it any use trying to say these arguments are "only" philosophy and that the sole debates worth having are those based on empirical evidence. This sort of thinking is late 19th century. Quantum physics teaches us that mind and object cannot be disentangled. While we cannot influence the structure of the physical world with our thoughts, our thoughts construct a reality which may not be "out there". Nor can we rely on language. Human language is not a cosmic universal, it is a local patois, in terms of understanding the universe a few steps up from the barking of a dog.

Erwin Schrodinger (of Schrodinger's cat) one of the greatest theoretical physicists of all time, was not deceived by empiricism. He said:

The world extended in space and time is our representation ? "vorstellung". Experience does not give us any clue to it been anything besides that?.

Later, of the inability of the mind to step outside the physical world he wrote,

Speaking without metaphor we have to declare that we are here faced with one of those typical antimonies caused by the fact we have not yet succeeded in elaborating a fairly understandable outlook on the world without retiring our own mind, the producer of the world picture, from it, so the mind has no place in it.

It is why philosophy is so important.

References:
What is Life? Erwin Schrodinger Cambridge University Press 0-521 ? 42708-8

Cross-posted at the Social Affairs Unit

"No that is unfair"
Harsh, defintely. I was in a cranky mood. Unfair? You put it in an interesting way:
"Most British people fully understand the unique problem America has with its law that forbids the teaching of religion in schools . . ." Who has the problem? America. What's the problem? The law. That's not how I would put it; it is, however, fairly accurate, so I dunno . . .

"It seems to me that in the US debate over evolution your preoccupation with fundamentalism is proving a tar baby."
This is something I often wonder. Certainly, PZ's concise comment provides welcome clarity (and saves us all from the bumbling and overly verbose attempt I was going to post!) However, to a large extent this debate isn't about the facts. There's an interesting bit on this in the Loom's comment section following Flock of Dodos directer Olson's suggestions on what evolutionists should do to improve communication: someone asks if there's a simple, profusely-illustrated book that presents the evidence for evolution in hard-to-refute, wonder-sparking concrete form, and someone else replies, based on their experience teaching intro bio to Kansas State U. students:

"The reality is that in almost every case, such questioning (e.g. "Show me some transitional fossils") just does not come from a deep-seated curiosity about the details of evolution, paleontology, etc. There is a deeper source. Nobody is asking you for a cogent explanation of how a transistor works; they just accept that sort of science, plug in their iPod and go about their business. Why is that? Because no authority figure in a Sunday School has told them, during their pre-logical age, that the science behind iPods threaten their immortal soul. So going along with that framing of the debate, as I noted before, just means that you will never run out of questions from folks like that. It gets exhausting once you realize that there will be no end to that sort of question!

As Mary notes, you need to short-circuit this strategy and go to the SOURCE of the questions. That would be an attempt to get them to think about the assumptions that underlie their belief that evolution threatens their immortal soul."

Now certainly there are people who are honestly skeptical, esepcially given the distorted public image of evolution (due in part to the effect of creationist pressure on science ed) and the clever framing of the situation as involving stubborn, territorial elitist scientists trying to crush alternate viewpoints who only want a fair hearing! But for many this issue is one that less to do with facts than belief, fear, resentment, etc. Remember, the folks supporting good science education are fighting a defensive battle (unless you view trying to teach kids modern biological science an offensive act) - the tar baby of religious anti-evolutionism is up and lurching at us. Just because this isn't an important factor - yet - across the Atlantic doesn't mean we can ignore it.

How to respond is an important question - and certainly some approaches don't work that well. ID creationism has been having a rough time lately, and figuring out what's worked is helpful . .

Sorry about the runaway italics, the blockquote should end following "their belief that evolution threatens their immortal soul." Hate html. Worse than algebra!

"Critics of my parable "Darwin's Silver Box" are either being short sighted or disingenuous."
It's true, I wear glasses . . .

"Stripped of its religious and political overtones, which is why the argument over evolution versus intelligent design generates so much heat in the US (but not here in Britain where we are not so exercised by religion) the real problem is . . ."

See, I would say that the real problem is that this is like saying "once you remove all the layers from the onion," or "unravel all the yarn from the sweater (is anyone else really creeped out by that SciFi channel ad where the guy gigglingly unravels himself?). Strip the ID debate of its religious and political overtones, and you end up with nothing - no there there.

I'll grant that the IDC movement, in its efforts to overthrow evil materialistic science and replace it with a theologically acceptable alternative, has raised the interesting question you describe. Just the way little people form their concepts of alive/not alive, made/natural is fascinating - especially when you hit cases like seeds and eggs and such. When you throw in evolution and creationism . . . interesting article: Evans, E. M. (2001). Cognitive and contextual factors in the emergence of diverse belief systems: Creation versus evolution. Cognitive Psychology, 42, 217-266

"One argument against this (P Z Myers) is that you might be able to tell an object was designed because the arrangement of its nested proteins (its bricks as it were) was different."
That's not quite what he said - or rather, you're smooshing together two things he did say. Can someone help explain what PZ meant by "nested hierarchy of all other life on earth"? I'll just make a mess of it. You get part of the idea - I like the brick analogy - but you're missing the part that involves some of the most powerful evidence in favor of evolution.

" while it is perfectly possible that human beings are the product of natural selection"
Thanks!

"how do we know that in our primitive state as cells million years ago we were not the creation of creatures "
Yep, that's a tough one. The thing is, it's not a useful question for science at this point.
Honestly, it just isn't. Maybe in a few decades or centuries, I dunno.

"This sort of thinking is late 19th century"
No, no, what you have to say is "This line of thinking is so late 19th century. Like, totally!"

"Quantum physics teaches us that mind and object cannot be disentangled."
Oh, stop.

"Human language is not a cosmic universal, it is a local patois, in terms of understanding the universe a few steps up from the barking of a dog."
I kinda like that. I wish you had a period after patois, though - a bit overboard there, maybe?

"Erwin Schrodinger (of Schrodinger's cat)"
Anybody remember that episode of Stargate SG-1 when Sam mentioned the whole Schrodinger's cat thing to a (human) alien from a very technologically advanced society, and he was like, eww!, they did that to a poor animal, and she was like, no, no, it was just a thought experiment!, and she gave him a cat called Schrodinger and they were like, all in love and stuff, but he had to (sniffle) leave because the government would have tried to learn about the advanced technology and do bad stuff and it was so SAD!

And just about as relevent.

Although there's something about watching a sci-fi series sortakinda based on Chariots of the Gods? that gives me a little frisson of guilty pleasure . . .

I got the impression Mr Harris was in over his head when I read this:

[quote]Quantum physics teaches us that mind and object cannot be disentangled. While we cannot influence the structure of the physical world with our thoughts, our thoughts construct a reality which may not be "out there". [/quote]
The way it is put makes it seem contradictory to me. So our minds are entanlged with "reality", but yet we can also construct an internal reality that is different from the real reality?

Anyway, his argument on this thread looks to me just like another God of the gaps argument, and as such, quote boring.