Animals show a lot of intelligence in the way they make choices, size up their opponents, and find their way home, many things. They show a real appraisal of situations and a free choice in that it is not automatic; they seem to make deliberate choices.
Plus their bodies are under sensible regulation, automatically responding to stimuli like catching their balance and blinking their eyes to ward off dust. When they move their bodies, hundreds of muscles have to be flexed in the correct sequence and at the right intensity. Our own bodies are similar. We do not consciously control most of our reflexes, muscular movement, secretion of our internal organs, our body’s response to illness, like using elevated temperature to destroy pathogens. Even the automatic control of temperature, not only our own personal body temperature, but all human body temperatures, being uniform. Some rational thought and decision-making is operating here, if not our own, then some prevailing intelligence in nature.
Take skill in art, for example. Most people do not have a talent for art, but some do. Some people can duplicate a picture merely by looking at it. How do they control the muscles in their hand and arm to cause precise movements that accurately draw what they have seen? What survival value is there in that skill or any skill, talent that many individuals have? Actually, where do those talents come from? How could something so obviously organized come from a non-intelligent source?
It’s similar in the physical world: the orderly arrangement of sub-atomic particles to form atoms, the absolute identical property of individual atoms, each atom of iron, for example, has identical properties. Where did all this uniformity and predictability, this sensible response to stimuli come from?
It seems to me that there is a lot of evidence for intelligence behind nature.
Maurice A. Williams
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