[Lullaby Chainer]

Quote by: ryanatau This was interesting. Who is the guy Dawkins is talking to?

The only name I can find is Abbas, which doesn't really help much.

Quote by: ryanatau One of the coolest things is thinking about how evolution affects human cognition. The optimist in me wants to believe that to a certain extent we have broken through our evolutionary roots and thus have theoretical understanding.

We have. Condoms are proof of that.

Quote by: Technosoul In the interview they used the word agent to discribe the "stuff" that living things have, and that material objects do not have.

Living things are also material objects.

What really is an "agent"? Is it a soul, a spirit, a secret agent man called God? A rose by any other name is still a rose.

A rose does not have a lot of "agency". What they meant by agency is an organism's ability to respond to it's environment not like non-living objects would. A cheetah has agency because it can change directions while running without external forces pushing it that way.

I see little difference in calling the idenity of life an agent or a spirit, or soul. Because they cannot show me with phsyical evidence where that agent is located at in the human body.

The brain is where the agency originates. In plants (in terms of growing towards sunlight) I'd say it originates from chemical functions organized in ways you'd never find organized in a rock.

And just what in particular do they feel that our natural perceptions have created an illusion about? Which religious concept is being imagined because we must distingish food from everything else in the landscape?

It's about "overlooking agency" being more dangerous than a false positive. In other words, thinking something with agency is an inanimate object is far more dangerous than thinking an inanimate object is something with agency. This is a HIGHLY possible evolutionary trait as it has Darwinian advantage.