IT WAS A PRIVATE CONVERSATION - if Assyriankey is okay with it.

[davdi]

I am still intrigued by your statement and would like to toss some ideas around with you, if you are up to it?   

[davdi]

I was watching a TED talk.  The man talking was dressed in the garb of a Sikh.  His turban was the same color as his kurta (shirt) and I can only suppose his pajama was the same color.  The facial structure, the skin tone, the somewhat gaunt appearance he presented was very decidedly Indian. There was nothing about the man would, in a visual context, give away that he spoke with a decided and consistent Australian accent. 

In effect, I have three mother tongues.  I learned to speak both Bengali and Hindi before I spoke English.  To the surprise of many with whom I come into contact in their native languages they say I speak without trace of an accent.  As far as I have been able to discern there are several words that I do speak with a Canadian type accent. 

There is a lesson in this, and if I have any say it would be that adaptability is not on the genetic level, but on the ability of the mind to process it's surroundings and function therein.  I would interprete this as a problem for genetic research only if one is convinced that the brain/mind is genetically determined. 

[Assyriankey]

I agree, I think.

What is genetic is the degree of adaptability that can be accommodated by the brain.

Various species of wasp illustrate this quite well.  These wasps seem to be quite adaptable in their thinking, but only up to a point.  They feed their young live catch in their burrows at least once per day.  Each young have their own barrow.  During the breakfast feed, the wasp checks the state of development of each young, and from that single inspection they decide on the entire day's menu.  If the young are newly hatched, they get very small catch, if the young are more developed, they get bigger catch.  Researchers can swap the young into different barrows after the breakfast feed but the wasp doesn't care - it just uses the morning inspection's result to guide each young's diet throughout the day.  The wasp is adaptable but only up to a point.

We are just like that too, but the point at which we stop adapting is different.  The brain is a product of our genes, our behaviours are a product of our brain.  The coupling is loose.

[davdi]

Kurlifri likes the Einstein statement that if we were to judge gushes by their ability to climb trees, fish would never live up to our expectation. 

In that same vein, I saw the first titmouse today, for this season.  It occurred to me that the size differential between a titmouse or a hummingbird and an eagle is greater than the size differential between a human and a Sasquatch.  Since I don't speak hummingbird, I won't be able to ask a hummingbird if it "believes" in Eagles! 

But the point is more like, earthworms are sentient beings.  Their normal environment doesn't include humans, cats or robins.  But I wonder if they don't have several "words" for rain, and several words for soils. 

In that same vein, we do not live in the same environment with God, so God for us is a foreign concept.  We have a bunch of words for God and recently that vocabulary has begun including a number of salacious concepts.

But the real question here is this.  If there is an ontological unitynof the material world, does that not imply a "system", a general category if interconnectedness that could lead one to assume a design and then a designer?   

[davdi]

Guess this one died on the vine, too.