“What distinguishes humans from other creatures is … our relative lack of instincts or preformed, preset inherited patterns of behaviour, which give other creatures a much more fixed nature than we have.” – M. Scott Peck

What about animal instinct? Where does this inexplicable though very real intelligence reside?

A clear example of this is illustrated by an infant antelope. The moment after birth, still wet with embryonic fluid, shakes itself off, proceeding to walk around exploring its world with still limp unexercised limbs. Though, from the very start all four legs already unconsciously knowing the dynamics of controlling itself in a coordinated manner in space and time. Bearing in mind all its billions of associated cells will follow this command in synchronous order, allowing the creature to move in any direction, at any required speed, wherever its soon agile limbs would take it.

And if you think that is a magnificent feet for a newly-born. Imagine what the challenge might be with a fellow having a few hundred of them such as a millipede? A creature with hardly any brain to speak of.

Cat behaviour does convincingly suggest that unconscious group learning indeed must occur on a much deeper cognitive level. More often than not domestic cats are removed from their litters before any such learnt behaviour could have been acquired. Yet cats almost consistently will bury their faeces in the sand. This certainly could not have been genetically passed in the DNA code itself. Rather, the cat gene seems to act as a key of sorts that unlocks behavioural characteristics derived from some underlying cat identity that informed the behaviour instinctively. Irrespective of how it might have evolved or have been acquired, this now is a common aspect that informs the behaviour of all domestic cats.

What must be grasped is that the cat suspended a natural response to rather respond to a seemingly unnatural hygiene compulsion. Then on getting to the location, to further resist just-doing-it by first digging a hole, upon which it neatly closes up its mess.

These complex behaviour patterns are similarly observed in birds that have complex nest-building abilities such as swallows. These abilities were certainly not learnt in the course of their lives. This therefore is unlike the requirement for humans, where we have to systematically observe and internalise how a complex task must be done. But rather that they simply are able to do it merely because they are swallows. I suppose learning on the trot was not an option for these creatures as they would have been scorpion meat if one was a millipede for instance, or on some other predators menu for dinner at their birth, if it was not so.

Therefore these responses seem to be programmed in the instinctive behaviour-set of the cat – or the swallow. And not learnt through cognitive exposure to the respective activity.

Hence the argument that a few dozen genes hold the information necessary for unfolding physical and behavioural complexity in such creatures is not a practical postulation. For besides having to account for the specific code responsible for unfolding the physical being, it has to build in complex behaviour patterns as well. This therefore accounting for how the various interdependent cells have to function on an incredibly mind-boggling logistical level, without having the benefit of a prior rehearsal.

Thus one must conclude that the genes are not in itself responsible for the actual physical and behavioural unfolding of the creature. It should instead be viewed as a code that unlocks the instruction set that is already accounted for on a deeper plane—specifically for antelopes, or cats, or millipedes, or finches, or bees, or humans, or whatever other unfolding is required. 

It is also interesting that according to the Human Genome Project, 90% of the human genome is shared by other mammals as well. Thus the particular anatomical variations together with the respective behaviour patterns must therefore be accounted for in the remaining fraction of the DNA code.

This is an absolute mathematical impossibility. Therefore the gene itself cannot be responsible for both the unfolding of the physical creature, together with the intricate behaviour patterns which consequently must be neurologically defined in advance.

That genetics is a purely chemo-mechanical manifestation is furthermore limited on a very basic logical level.  This is because one can compare the unfolding of any creature based on its respective combination of Adenine, Guanine, Thymine and Cytosine (the logical building blocks of the DNA strand) with a person being shown the letters C, O and W, but that person never having heard of a cow before. Therefore they would be unable to make a meaningful association with the word cow as they had no prior experience with the nature of the beast to thereby base an understanding on. Thus whether to see it as holy, or as a regular source for fresh milk, or whether it will make a good trade-off for magic beans, or not.

When postulating the dynamics involved we have to consciously appreciate that the genetic code is merely a four letter alphabet that is responsible for infinitely more meaning than the one we associate with verbal communication.  It being responsible for far more complex coherent multi-dimensional meaning.  That is the meaning behind the unfolding of life in three spatial dimensions, one time dimension, and infinitely many more behavioural dimensions—such as that of our personalities, intellects, instincts, emotions, and then of course, our spiritual dimensions of being as well.

The implication of the above discussion is this:

To put the entire issue of life, genetics, God, universal intelligence, consciousness, the brain and mind, time and space, and all else, into a healthy perspective, picture an unbroken chicken egg. Now imagine breaking the shell and gently pouring its contents into a small bowl.

What do you see?

I’m sure you are mentally observing more or less what I am seeing too. That is a bright yellow yolk the colour and shape of the sun, surrounded by transparent jellylike albumen. 

Yet that nebulous mass of primal protein holds all that is necessary to unfold a perfect intelligent life. With complex eyes, ears and nervous system; viscous red blood; toes, beak, liver, heart, brain, veins, cloaca, feathers; and whatever else you will associate with a tiny little chick. And of course, that it knows how to be a chick from the very moment it cracked open its shell. From the day it was born scratching around in the dirt for tiny morsels it deemed edible, yet also somehow knowing what to avoid.

All this being accomplished within three weeks. On its own, from a tiny singular fertilised cell containing a message it unambiguously obeyed, to so become a very particular type of non-flying bird.

And the mother most certainly did have a significant hand in its unfolding. For if she were to have loitered a lot the chick might not be the best chicken or cockerel it one day could’ve been. This is just as Gender Identity Disorder may be a direct result of the chemical makeup of the pregnant mother when she may have been depressed.

But that is mere detail that should not dismiss the wonder inherent in an act that indeed is so commonplace it is taken completely for granted!

The significant point to grasp from this to aid understanding our greater existence that one may put the smallest details into their proper perspective, is this. That the tiny single embryonic cell that started it all off, is so immensely intelligent that it functions on a level that is beyond our own logical comprehension. 

In fact, it is capable of manifesting something beyond anything we can even nearly consciously conceive. And in manifesting, logically orchestrating billions of individual entities of life, somehow becoming a coherently interconnected being. Doing so apparently on its very own, and on an exceedingly tight schedule.

But let me rather rest my case just here, as by now I’m sure you must be convinced that it is improbable that stone cold matter, just one day on its very own, suddenly found a way to become animated existence. Then proceeding on its merry way from there.

The simple extrapolation that sceptics now have to make from this is to realise.

© Newton Fortuin – 2005

Selected extracts from Understanding Existence.