Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Saturday, February 06, 2021, 11:32 (1169 days ago) @ David Turell

Spiders lasso

dhw: So your God preprogrammed spiders and webmaking 3.8 billion years ago, or stepped in to perform the necessary operations on pre-spiders. Just making sure I've understood. I agree, though, that many of the natural wonders you like to attribute to your God’s direct design could be the result of organisms accidentally stumbling on useful additions to their means of survival, and I would propose that when confronted with problems, they also use their intelligence to solve them. In both cases, the advantages will survive and become instinctual.

DAVID: I agree. I view the strong webs as God's gift to spiders.

Hardly an agreement, but if you believe your God preprogrammed spiders and their strong webs 3.8 billion years ago, or alternatively popped in to operate on pre-spiders, so be it.

Fin to limb genes

QUOTE: These results reveal that the ability to form limb-like structures was present in the common ancestor of tetrapods and teleost fishes and has been retained in a latent state which can be activated by genetic changes. (David’s bold)

DAVID: This is a beautiful example of my theory that God had preplanning in His coding of early DNA.

dhw: This is the mechanism for all kinds of changes. If God exists, I would agree that he endowed “early DNA” with the ability to form all kinds of structures, and I have no objection to your calling this “preplanning” – it is the blueprint for diversification. It does not, however, mean that your God preplanned every new life form, econiche, natural wonder etc., or that he turned fins into limbs or limbs into fins before the particular life form changed its environment, or that every life form, econiche, natural wonder etc. was “part of the goal of evolving humans”. I would say this article is a “beautiful example” of my theory that the mechanism for evolution was present in the earliest cells (possibly God’s design), and resulted in speciation as and when cell communities used it to adapt to or exploit new conditions.

DAVID: Our views are not that different. Yours: God might have; mine: God did it.

Your “God did it” means that he preprogrammed everything 3.8 billion years ago, or popped in to change fins to limbs and limbs to fins before the respective animals changed their environments. My “God might have” refers to the design of cells with the intelligence to “do it” themselves. I’d say there’s quite a difference.