Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Monday, February 22, 2021, 13:25 (1157 days ago) @ David Turell

Evolution: always advancing or not?

DAVID: My simple logical reasoning stays the same: God chose to evolve us from bacteria, thus the known history.

dhw: But if he exists, he also chose to evolve millions of other life forms, and 99% of them had no connection with humans, but you insist that humans were his only purpose, and so you have no idea why he chose to evolve all the other life forms. Please stop dodging!

DAVID: It is not a dodge. You don't accept my logic just as I don't accept the illogic of your complaint.

What logic? You have agreed that you have no idea why a God with a single purpose (H. sapiens plus food supply) would directly create millions of now extinct life forms and food supplies, 99% of which had no connection with humans.

dhw: You have just repeated the same dodges that you have been using for months if not years. Please stop it, and let’s move on.

DAVID: Of course move on as we will never agree on the points in question.

Done – until the next time you raise the issue!

Extreme extremophiles

DAVID: No purpose. Life can adapt to living everywhere and to survive extinction events God knew would happen. He wanted life to survive any eventuality, toughness built-in.

dhw: Some life forms survive and some don’t. But if God exists, I’ll go along with the idea that he provided cells with the mechanism which he knew would enable some of them to survive and even to evolve. So if your God wanted life to survive, what makes you think that whatever method he may have used to enable them to survive did not have the purpose of enabling them to survive?

DAVID: It did in the sense I have given. So life would exist always.

dhw: And what is the continuance of life if it’s not survival?

DAVID: Of course life will survive, but I see a difference of approach. Life is built to survive but evolution does not depend upon survival to drive it, which you imply.

What do you think is the purpose of adaptation, if it is not to survive? What do you think is the purpose of innovations if it is not to improve chances of survival?

Physical change in speciation

DAVID: My point is most of us die of wearing out, not mistakes.

dhw: I’m sure that will provide great consolation for those who do die because of mistakes (i.e. the list of horrendous diseases). My point is that there ARE mistakes, so there is no point in dismissing the cellular theory just because it would make mistakes.

DAVID: Organisms make minor adaptations by using information in their cell's DNA. That is all we know. You want cell committees to do the work to avoid direct actions by God. We will always differ on the point.

You dismissed the theory of cellular intelligence because it would make mistakes, and I have pointed out to you that what you believe is your God’s direct handiwork has resulted in the mistakes that cause horrendous diseases etc. etc. Hence theodicy. Your scepticism concerning the autonomous ability of cells to design innovations is a separate subject. Please stick to the point.

Neanderthal contributions

QUOTES: "It was recently shown that the major genetic risk factor associated with becoming severely ill with COVID-19 when infected by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is inherited from Neandertals.
In contrast to the previously described Neandertal haplotype that increases the risk for severe COVID-19, this Neandertal haplotype is protective against severe disease.

DAVID: More evidence that interbreeding of human types aided in our overall immunities. Since different environments had different viruses the different disease experiences were combined in sapiens as as final product of evolution.

It would appear that we have inherited good and bad genetic factors from our ancestors, which is hardly surprising.