ARE WE HERE TO RE-CREATE OURSELVES?: The Convergence of Designs

3/5 ( ratings)

KIRKUS REVIEW
This thought experiment–turned-manifesto delves into the possibilities of intelligent-design theory.
Simmons brings his multifaceted interests and his background as a medical doctor to this sweeping discussion of macroevolution and intelligent-design theory.

Booklife/Publisher's Weekly Review
Takeaway: Intelligent design adherents will find this a thought-provoking introduction to robotics and artificial intelligence.
Great for fans of Michael J. Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box, Phillip E. Johnson

Past Praise for What Darwin Didn’t Know. “The relentless detailing of biological elegance and complexity overwhelms facile Darwinism stories as a tidal wave overwhelms a beach.”Michael Behe, ,Ph.D., author of Darwin’s Black Box

For Billions of Missing Links
"A well-researched and open-minded analysis.”
Stephen C. Meyer, PhD; Director of the Center for Science and Culture, Discovery Institute and author of The Signature in the Cell

There may be many reasons why we are here on Earth. Then again, maybe there are none. The reasons that are usually cited include glorifying God, having dominion over all animals, cherishing our parents, raising a family, helping the poor and the unfortunate, tending to the sick and lame, maintaining good health, relieving suffering, and striving to be happy.. One might add: becoming successful in life . What’s missing, is whether we are also re-creating ourselves for implicit and competitive reasons. We definitely have been trying, in some fashion or another, to copy the human being, dating back to the beginning of recorded time. One merely needs to study the progression from cave drawings to paintings to blueprints to mechanical entities to computer programs to robots and humanoids.
Some authors have penned the idea that re-creating humans is a relatively easy task. After all, aren’t we just a series of simple accidents happening over a very long period of time? We’re special, changing monkeys who came from a long line of ancestors? Some say it was a lightning strike to a puddle of sorts that started it all; yet, lightning burns, disables, destroys and kills. Nonetheless, life started up, steadily improved, changed in uncountable ways and added on new DNA information. Where these new coils of DNA came from or how they changed configurations has never been explained.
The truth is that re-creating a human being would require uncountable millennia, yet-to-be discovered, uncountable chemical processes and an ocean full of superhuman magic. One will have to explain how complexity upon complexity upon complexity happened simultaneously and/or sequentially. How did kindness, empathy, compassion, creativity, prayer and the ability to laugh come about? And, just where did the soul come from? One can take the body apart, much as one strips a car, and never find the seat of the soul. Yet, we have one just as we have two eyes and a nose. Who’s talking to whom when we carry on an internal dialogue?
Our history strongly suggests we are here, at least in part, to re-create human facsimiles, called humanoids. One can readily see a constantly improving, convergence of designs over time. We are now copying many of those designs. This book braids human capabilities together, such as vision, ambulation, hearing, tasting and consciousness, using the two standout, contemporary explanations of our origins, i.e. Intelligent Design and the theory of evolution. This book shows that evolution, if it is to be believed, requires a lot of Intelligent Guidance .