Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, March 27, 2021, 18:00 (1127 days ago) @ dhw

Possums

DAVID: Your 'communication' never explains how complex concepts like length of possum playing time is determined.

dhw: May I humbly suggest that the possum himself does not know how long it will take, and if he has one grain of sense, he will very cautiously open one eye and very cautiously look around and very cautiously adjust his position until he is sure that the coast is clear, and then run like mad for safety. Now please tell us how you think your God informs every possum about the length of time needed to play dead.

Then the eye-opening gambit must be communicated. How?

Penguins

DAVID: God speciates to anticipate use for new needs.

dhw: So he operated on penguin feet before they entered the water. And how about his methods of passing information to every possum and every migrating bird?

Change in genome coding.

Introducing the brain

dhw: My mind is not closed to the concept of a soul. I just don’t understand its relevance to a half-second gap for the feeling of pain to get from finger to brain. Please explain.

DAVID: Egnor did. The soul recognizes the immediate pain.

dhw: How does a half-second gap (which unsurprisingly feels like “immediate”) between finger prick and brain awareness prove the existence of a soul? I simply cannot understand the relevance of Libet’s experiment to the existence or non-existence of the soul...as far as I can see, the only conclusion he draws from the gap is that the soul doesn’t live in the brain. But perhaps you could just tell us why you consider Libet’s experiment relevant to the existence of a soul.

The soul attached to the brain is doing the immediate feeling, per Egnor.

Philosophy of science dead? Realism vs. empiricism

DAVID: I know God cannot be fully proved, as you are evidence, but strongly inferred from evidence, all of which confuses you, as you recognize evidence from obvious design.

dhw: Sorry, but if something can’t be “fully proved”, it can’t be proved. God is an unprovable conjecture, and we’d need to leave this world to prove his existence.

Agreed, but in this world from NDE evidence

Cell division controls of mitochondria
QUOTE: Certain types of cell divide asymmetrically and generate daughter cells with different fates.

dhw: This generally is how I envisage the basis of adaptation and innovation and also brain expansion. When necessary, cells reproduce themselves without change, but there is a built-in flexibility that enables them to produce cells that can serve new functions as and when required.

DAVID: And who built in the flexibility? Natural chance?

dhw: How often do you want me to repeat that your God may have designed the intelligent cell? But I’m delighted that you have no objection to the theory that the cells themselves can produce innovations (“new functions”) when required.

We both strictly agree organisms can make minor adaptations by epigenetics of DNA in those cells required to make the change. God provided the system of methylation.