More Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Sunday, May 05, 2024, 09:37 (14 days ago) @ David Turell

Enjoyment, boredom , humanization, allegory and theodicy.

All covered on the other thread.

Aquatic spiders

DAVID: Obviously, you enjoy just-so stories. You just spouted a truism

dhw: A truism is something that is so obviously true that it doesn’t need to be said. So why do you call an obvious truth a “just-so story”? More self-contradictions!

DAVID: Just-so stories are presented as if truth, elephant trunk or giraffe neck origins as examples.

Why is it a just-so story that organisms might move elsewhere if they can’t find food or are in danger? You called it a truism. See above for the meaning of the word.

This obviously true proposal explains the purpose and history of evolution: that organisms find different ways of responding to new requirements (or they go extinct). I must confess I find it more convincing than a divine dabble or a divine 3.8-billion-year-old programme for every change.

dhw: […] No one is suggesting that a change in the structure of certain cells is on a par with rocket science. You have agreed that cells are capable of minor autonomous adaptations. I don’t know where you draw the line between minor and major, but since the spiders are still spiders, I wouldn’t have thought these changes counted as major.

DAVID: Neither do I.

dhw: Oh! So why did you say God must have designed them?

DAVID: Misinterpretation. These spiders have designed attributes to fill their role in ecosystems.

dhw: We’re talking about the different ways in which they have adapted to life in the water. You said your God must have designed them, but if you think the changes were minor, then your God would not have needed to intervene.

DAVID: Each adaptation must be studied for complexity. If very complex God designed it.

You have just agreed that the changes were NOT major (= very complex). Now you agreement changes to “if”.

DAVID: Life requires active ecosystems as the one the spiders are in.

dhw: Of course it does. But that doesn’t mean that all active ecosystems (not to mention the millions of extinct ecosystems) have been specially designed for humans.

DAVID: All for our use.

dhw: God designed lots of different aquatic spiders and every ecosystem for the last 3.8 billion years for our use? I hope you enjoy your trilobite soup and your dinosaur steak.

DAVID: What happened long ago makes our current result.

dhw: SOME of what happened long ago (approx. 0.1%) makes our current result. The rest, as you have agreed, did NOT lead to our current results.

DAVID: The 99.9% extinct are the ancestors of the 0.1%c surviving now.

I don’t believe it! Having dropped the subject two days ago, you once more return to the same massive contradiction of your own statement, which I have quoted again and again. Here are the comments from two days ago:

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99% of all creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

dhw: I asked this unequivocal question in order to end the long-drawn-out discussion you are now trying to re-open. You agreed that we and our contemporaries are directly descended from 0.1% of all the creatures that ever lived. We are not descended from 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived. And yes, we are descended from a line of mammals that co-existed with the dinosaurs, but the vast majority of dinosaurs left no descendants except for birds.

Early barred spiral galaxies

DAVID: If one assumes the universe developed following a purpose, early development of large barred spiral galaxies would presage the appearance of an early Milky Way in that form, allowing for our solar system to appear. Of course, one can take the position of pure chance governed the progress. The chance course must take into account all the contingent events leading to us. Odds? Enormously against chance.

It is estimated that there are between 2,000,000,000 and 2,000,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe. The “divine” course assumes that there is a purpose for every single one, and your own particular divine course proposes that every single one is/was necessary for the production of us humans and our contemporary species. For some people, the odds that one of those possible two trillion galaxies will happen to produce evolvable life are more favourable than the odds on an unknown divine being who creates two trillion for the sake of just one. It comes down to irrational faith in one or the other – or simply acknowledging that we can’t possibly know.