Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Wednesday, February 17, 2021, 18:27 (1163 days ago) @ dhw

Evol: always advancing or not?

QUOTE: "[…] it calls into doubt whether true fitness maxima exist and, more broadly, it implies that directionality and progress in evolution may be illusory.'"

DAVID: Basically evolution can go back and forth, not steadily forward

dhw: But one would have thought that a God who, according to you, had just one purpose and was always in full control of evolution, would have moved steadily forward in his pursuit of his goal. Hence my repeating ad nauseam my question why you think he didn’t, and your ad nauseam insistence that it’s all logical though you have no idea why he would have fulfilled his purpose this way.

My logic is God chose to evolve. He makes history and so that is logical. The Darwinian article is discussing the viability of the 'fitness' theory, and finds evolution doesn't really fit it. God wanted us but was not at high speed over 3.8 billion years

Extreme extremophiles

QUOTE: "Learning more about how the organisms have adapted to their freezing home far from food may also give us clues about how life evolved […]

DAVID: Just more evidence showing how tough life is, surviving everywhere.

dhw: It is truly amazing. Note that even you lay emphasis on survival as the prime purpose of life forms.

Just the opposite!! Life is so tough it easily survives everywhere. As usual you are backwards in you thinking.

Physical change in speciation

QUOTE: "...neo-Darwinism must explain not only how hardware features mutated into existence but also how the biological operating software came into existence and could then be modified successfully in dramatic ways.
***
"Materialist thinkers contend that every feature of brain, mind, and consciousness arose via cause-effect physics and chemistry accounted for by neo-Darwinism. In that case, they first need to explain how biological software is created and stored in animals, and then how such software can be mutated by accident just in time to operate new biological hardware. Solve those problems first, before claiming human consciousness is mere biochemistry."

dhw: ALL organisms are composed of cells, and even you believe in common descent. This means that throughout thousands of millions of years, cells have learned to cooperate and combine in forming one new structure after another. You believe these were divinely programmed or dabbled, but the cells would still have had to cooperate and combine, whether he did it or they did it for themselves. The PROCESS of restructuring is the same. Hardware/software is an unnecessary image. Of course all parts of the organism must function together if it is to survive. The great problem is how the ability of cells to reorganize themselves arose in the first place, which is the same as asking what is the origin of life. Nobody knows.

We ID folks believe only a designer had to do it.

Chimps ‘r’ not us

dhw: Nobody ever said they were.

DAVID: We may have 98% similar bases with chimps but the 3-D DNA's are at least 78% different as discussed in our past entries.

dhw: Do you believe we are descended from apes or don’t you?

Did you miss the point? Yes we descended, but we are not 98% the same as materialistic Darwinists tout.>

Immunity from Neanderthals

DAVID: A little interbreeding helped us sapiens folks. This has been discussed before when it was found that Neanderthal genes help our general immunity. This is a more specific case. dhw asked in the past why God would produce so many varieties of hominin/homo types and this result offers a reason.

dhw: No it doesn’t. If H. sapiens was the only species he wanted, and if he is always in total control of evolution, why this roundabout way of doing it? (In anticipation of your stock reply, no, I am not questioning God. I am questioning your interpretation of your hypothetical God's purpose and method in creating the evolutionary process.

I can only look at the real history and not question why God did it the way it appeared. It resulted in more sapiens immunity noting bad bugs were around.