Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Friday, February 19, 2021, 11:08 (1163 days ago) @ David Turell

Evolution: always advancing or not?

DAVID: My logic is God chose to evolve. He makes history and so that is logical.

dhw: Yes of course God, if he exists, must have chosen to set up the process of evolution, and yes of course he is responsible for the history of life. How does that explain your theory that he only had one purpose – to design H. sapiens – and proceeded to design anything but H. sapiens?

DAVID: Your inverted reasoning is amazing. How do you get from bacteria to humans without the intermediate steps? And you concede God could have chosen to evolve and create known history, as in the bold.

No “inversion”. The problem you so desperately try to avoid is why a God whose only purpose was to “evolve” (by which you mean design) H. sapiens plus food supply chose to evolve the millions of other life forms plus their food supplies which constitute the 99% that had no connection with humans. (The other 1% is the thread from bacteria to humans, in case you haven’t cottoned on.)

DAVID: Again, purpose forgotten or conveniently omitted: necessary food supply for a huge human population.

Cracked record. The food supply for the millions of extinct life forms did not provide food for humans. How many more times? “The current bush is NOW for humans NOW. There were smaller bushes in the PAST for PAST forms.” (D.Turell)

Extreme extremophiles

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

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

dhw: How does that come to mean that the prime objective of all life forms is not survival? Please tell us what other purpose these extreme extremophiles might have in “adapting to their freezing home”.

DAVID: Different interpretation: God made life so tough it easily survives everywhere. No struggle.

It makes no difference whether it’s easy or hard: please tell us what purpose other than survival these organisms might have had in “adapting to their freezing home”.

Physical change in speciation

dhw: …please tell us why you ID folks consider it impossible for your designer to have designed a mechanism that would enable cells to do their own designing.

DAVID: Secondhand designing requires too many instructions, and may cerate mistakes.

It’s not “secondhand” if God gave them the intelligence to do it, and of course it will create mistakes – that’s why organisms die, or hadn’t you noticed?

Chimps ‘r’ not us

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

dhw: You and the materialists still believe that we are descended from a common ape ancestor. So what is the new percentage meant to prove?

DAVID: God required for new highly different designs. We are amazingly different. Bo simple change.

But you believe that your God directly designed EVERY life form! That’s one of the major problems with your whole theory! If God had only one purpose – to design H. sapiens (plus food supply) – why did he design all the other life forms (plus food supplies) that had no connection with H. sapiens?

Antibiotic honey

DAVID: There are many steps in making honey. Not by chance. The process was designed.

Only included so that I can thank you for another wonderful article. And yes, those bees are clever designers, aren’t they!

insects silence plant defenses

DAVID: War between organisms is a part of life. What the plants are capable of producing affords secondary defenses, not immediate lethal. That allows the insects to try to adapt, but as I view it, enzymes are enormous complex molecules that God might have designed.

According to you, survival is not a struggle but is easy thanks to your God’s designs. But we are still faced with the obvious fact that survival is the prime motive for the behaviour of both plants and insects. Thank you for using the word “might” in “might have designed”. We are slowly coming closer together in our use of vocabulary.

Can we control climate?

QUOTE: The models do not know the future, and neither do the Climategate scientists. But an exaggerated view of future warming provides the ideal background for anti-carbon-based fuels policies that will undermine the economic well-being of every society in the world. We must not allow that.
Be a climate realist.

DAVID: I am a twin with this guy. I knew all the material presented long ago.

This is really scary. We, the innocent public, are in trouble either way, whether the dangers are real or the vested interests have created a tissue of lies about them. The article is scrupulously fair, though, in acknowledging the very real problems, and restricting the scepticism to the forecasts. I shouldn’t really take part in this discussion, because like most of us, I have no way of knowing how accurate the crystal-ball-gazers might be. But I would still say that the effects of pollution and of human interference with Nature are already devastating, and it is clear that drastic changes are needed if these effects are to be kept under control.