Saturday, September 23, 2006

More on Anthropomphism

From Mark Chu Carroll's Blog

In our observations of the universe, so far, we are the smartest living beings that we know about. We tend to be very impressed by our own intelligence, and the things that we have accomplished as a result. A lot of people, such as our friend Corny in the quoted article, believe that this means that intelligence can find the best solution to every problem, and that since we are the most intelligent, that means that we can/will find the best solution to every problem. If something in nature exceeds our ability to imagine/design a solution, then it necessarily must have been created by something more intelligent than us. That's a very inflated view of intelligence - and in particular, an incredibly inflated and egotistical view of humanity. It's basically an assertion that human understanding is a fundamental limit of natural systems. If we can't understand it, it can't exist. It we didn't think it up first, then it couldn't have just happened naturally. I find it ridiculous to claim that somehow nothing in nature, no natural process, can every produce a better result than a human brain. However, this is ultimately a subjective argument; Cornelius and people like him believe that we belong on some kind of pedestal; people like me don't. [My bold]