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Intelligent design


Tater ain't got a problem with the idea. Atheists and militant Evolutionists do.

Now, Tater ain't sayin evolution is bunk, cause it ain't. And he ain't sayin them fundamentalist intelligent designers is right, because they ain't. What he's sayin is that ain't no problem, scientifically, philosophically or religiously with the idea of an intelligence workin through the universe to make things what they are. And ain't no reason relgion and science gotta come to blows over the idea of God or not, intelligence or not, cause ain't no need for conflict. It's all a matter of what definition you use for intelligence and consciousness and mind and God.

Personally, Tater likes the definition that consciousness is what you got when you got a "picture" of the outside world right there inside you. That's what some of them brain scientists call a model. For us humans, that's our imagination, where we can set and close our eyes and imagine lyin down under a cottonwood tree on the riverbank with a fishin pole and a jug, just doin nothin. Mmmm, that sounds nice.

But we also got a "picture" of the world built right in when we ain't imaginin it. What we see and smell and hear, where we set in the world, ain't the real "outside world" either. It's just what our bodies and brains put together from the parts of the "outside" world touchin us with light, or music or bullets or breasts.

We can use that picture we got of the world to run different movies around in our head, seein which one might be the best, like when Tater was courtin Marlene, he thunk hard about how he could get that gal to notice him, seein as how he was just a shoveler over to the Seed-n-Feed and she was the newsgal over to KHUM. Had to think up 20 or 30 ways before he come across the right one. That's intelligence.

We got that whole thing goin on all the time, picturin things and editin em and runnin it back, and thinkin of music, and imaginin smells, and the feelins of mom's hugs, all them things, and at the same time we're right here in the world, shovelin feed, drinkin, fightin, gettin a haircut and whatnot. We got the real world and we got our representation, and they's all mixed up all the time, cause while we're listenin to Cletus Muley tell the same damned story for the hundredth time we imaginie we're beatin him on the head with a shovel. The whole kit and kaboodle, livin in the "real world" and imaginin other versions of it, that's Tater's definition of mind.

Now, ain't just people got mind and intelligence and consciousness, it's Baptists too. And dogs and cats and other animals. They all got a picture in they heads what it's like in the real world, and they can run it around a mess with it -- you ever seen a dog or a Baptist dreamin? Sure you have, and you know that dog's thinkin on chasin a rabbit or whatnot, and that Baptist is imaginin you burnin in the fires of hell. And if you have you a hound dog and a piece of pie, you know he's doin some plannin, cause the minute your back is turned that dog gonna go for that pie. Baptist too, come to think of it. Specially a pie got some bacon in it.

Now what about bugs and such? Sure, they got at least some of that. They sure enough in this world, and they can see and feel things and smell em and taste em, so they got the picture of the world in their lil heads, leastwise when they awake. The picture they got of your neck before they set to chompin on it is right inside em, and they got it because their eyes and brain grab the light and figure where it bounced off of. They got them an inner picture, so they got consciousness, usin Tater's definition. Same with your Baptists.

A little below the Baptists is your trees and rocks and such. Now, it's pretty easy to go that step and say a tree got consciousness, that's a picture of the "outside" world, on account of it knows where the water is in the dirt it's growin in. You get a tree started, and it will send out its roots and feel out where it's the wettest and send the roots on over there. They can smell bad bugs a comin too, and they know where it's sunniest and send leaves out there, and don't grow too many new ones on their shaded parts. Sure enough they got a representation of the world. Know about the water, and the bugs and the sun and all, so they's conscious, by Tater's definition.

Now what about your rocks? Ain't no way they conscious, right? Well, ponder on this a spell. You take a fresh made rock and set it out in the sun. It's gonna swell up and then shrink down when the sun goes down, and then keep on swellin and shrinkin with the heat and the cold every day. Over time, the's gonna be certain parts gonna break up a little cause they can't take the swellin and shrinkin, so the parts ain't fit for that environment gonna change makin it easier to swell up and shrink. And that rock gots what you call a "gradient" in it. That's a difference in the temperature from the top side gettin the sun to the bottom part in the shade settin on the earth. It knows which side is up. So that rock gots a "picture" of the outside world in it, hot on the side with the sun and cool on the side towards the earth, and not only that, it learnt somethin -- them chemical bonds that was too tight busted up and now that rock can swell up and shrink down more easy than before!

So rocks is conscious and they can learn. That's one more than the Baptists got.

So what's Tater's point?

Point is, you use the right definition of intelligence and mind and consciousness, you can make a good argument the universe is intelligent it's a mind and it's conscious, so it ain't too much of a stretch to say they's an intelligent design. Don't mean everthing's thinkin and a plannin, but it sure enough got a million pictures of itself all through there. Tater ain't worked out how an atom's got plans yet, but the idea that real simple things can have a right complicated picture of the world right inside of em ain't too difficult to see. And it ain't just simple things got complicated things pictured in em -- simple ideas can go off and make crazy complicated stories and pictures all by themselves if you just let em be. Tater's gonna give you an example fore he sets off.

Ain't too hard to write a computer program to show the Mandelbrot set, which is a real wiggly picture you can zoom into as far as you want, and don't nothin ever get blurry. You can fiddle around inside it and find all kinds of hidden treasures, real pretty things look like crazy forests and valleys and waterfalls that ain't nobody coulda imagined, all from a simple program ain't got but 20 lines. You run that loop over and over and you'll see that simple rules can generate complex results. Might even fool you into thinkin weren't no simple rules made it.

Suppose you had you an I-Pad with a zoomable Mandelbrot set coded right in it. You could move your fingers around on that screen and zoom in as far as you like anywhere on it, and you'd find all them pretty pictures everywhere, and you go for a closer look, why, they's still more to see. Don't matter how far in you go. If you ain't seen a Mandelbrot set before, and didn't know how simple it was to code up, you'd be sure it was designed by a real smart feller. Not just real smart, infinitely smart. On account of there's infinite detail everywhere in it, only an infinite intelligence (God) coulda designed it.

Tater didn't bring up God till now cause there weren't no need. Still ain't, really. God's just the name you slap on what's so complicated and mysterious you ain't got no other word for it. But like with that Mandelbrot business, it don't take much to give the impression of some super intelligence. Hell, even Tater can write somethin in Excel make a fractal like that, and it's more full of tricks than a congressman! So somethin simpler than a rock can fool you into thinkin it's so complicated gotta be created by God.

So, what do we got? Simple things actin real smart, smart like God, and a whole universe full of things that's all thinkin, in a manner of speakin, about the whole universe, or at least the parts near em. And because everything's connected to everything else by havin it in its mind ain't too much of a stretch to say the whole universe, this collection of all them minds, is a big ol mind. And that can't be nothin but God to a religious man, and a dynamic livin universe to a scientific man. Same thing, far as Tater's concerned.

Like that feller Alan Watts said "Imagine a multidimensional spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image."

See what he done there? He made a picture in your mind of the universe just bein a picture of a picture. That's just what it's like if the whole thing is a lot of little minds each with a picture of all the other things, and all them things is just little minds with pictures of all the *other* things in em...So the universe is just  pictures of pictures or pictures....  If that don't make you think, you might be a Baptist!