Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 10:00:46 +1100
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: Intelligence of man, God, Nature.



Steve wrote:
>
> Your narrative has aspects of seeming to fit with the long history of
> humans. But  you need to take into account that what we recognise as
> 'human' at least in the social and cultural sense, and thus probably in
> the sense of 'intelligence' appears to start with the invention of the
> state, more specifically the city-state. At the moment of the first
> industrial revolution, that of neolithic farming... From here it's
> relatively easy to postulate the importance of human population growth
> and the variable forms of dominance and oppression that these singular
> events brought into being.
>
> Prior to this moment 10,000 or so years ago the precise differences
> between a human and say a dolphin, or a great ape were to all inmtents
> and purposes Zero...
>
> Science and thus modern knowledge itself, in it's currently understood
> form comes into existence in the 16th and 17th Centuries.

No argument.

The sort of intelligence I'm trying to understand is that which emerged in
the minds of the ancient writers who invented  gods and narratives of
Creation,

I don't subscribe to the Divinity of a Creator, but "believe" whatever that
means, there is an "ordered" world that scientists describe.  Is it
self-creating?  Will it self-destruct?

regards
Hugh