Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 30, 2021, 14:24 (1124 days ago) @ David Turell

Possums and penguins
dhw: Since you ask me to explain how my theories work, let me in turn ask you how and when - i.e. 3.8 billion years ago, or with a dabble when he saw his creatures were in trouble - you think he inserted new play-dead genome codes into the first possums, and route maps from A to B into the first migrating birds?

DAVID: Either or, is all I can state.

dhw: That does not tell us “how”.

DAVID: Coded in DNA/whole genome as before.

You keep asking me how the possum communicates his trick to other possums, so I’m asking how your God codes the genome. Do you think he inserted a possum-play-dead programme into the first cells 3.8 billion years ago, or did he pop in to perform an operation on the genome of a group of possums?

Introducing the brain
DAVID: I've answered above, the soul working with/through the brain.

dhw: So you and Egnor believe in the existence of a soul, and the soul feels the physical pain immediately, while the brain feels it half a second later. Someone who doesn’t believe in a soul will suggest that the brain feels the pain half a second after the finger has been pricked. Please tell me what Egnor is trying to prove with this. Or just drop the subject.

DAVID: The soul operates as in the bold is what Egnor feels he proves. You don't have to accept it.

So we must simply take it for granted that we have a soul, and he is merely proving that the soul feels pain immediately, and the brain feels it half a second later. Oh well, let’s leave it at that then.

Horizontal gene transfer: plant to insect pest
DAVID: Your comment does not explain God's many corrective editing mechanisms.

dhw: Your comment does not explain why he deliberately designed bacteria and viruses that would cause untold suffering. Earlier, with regard to the errors caused by the system he designed, you also had him unable to correct some of the errors and leaving it to us clever humans to try and do it. For some reason, he wanted to challenge us! I suggest that your insistence on your God’s deliberate creation of disease-causing bacteria and viruses, and the non-correction of errors, make it harder and harder for you to solve the problem of theodicy.

DAVID: I've admitted I have no complete explanation or solution for Theodicy problems. I think future research will solve much of it.

Fair enough. Nobody has a “complete explanation” for any of our main subjects of discussion. All we can do is discuss the possibilities. But I must confess, I prefer possibilities that hang together logically to those that either contradict themselves or rely solely on hopes that future research will confirm their inherent preconceptions.

Seeing patterns
DAVID: reproduced in toto. The real point for me is not eye movement but brain interpretation. Our brain is built to help us see patterns and somewhat ancient sapiens did just that. I would assume with complex language development our forebears began naming star groupings.

I’d have thought that by now it was common knowledge that our perceptions and interpretations of just about everything entail a process of joining up the dots into “Gestalten”, i.e. patterns. Nothing added here.

Tectonics and environment
QUOTE: "The first eukaryote cells – which today make up every plant, animal and fungi today – evolved at the very beginning of the Boring Billion. Then, around 1.6 billion years ago, plants diverged from animals and fungi and 1.5 billion years ago animals and fungi split.”

It’s an amazing thought that all animal and plant life evolved from cooperation between cells, and that we ourselves are built of the same materials.

DAVID: (under “Plant responses to drought”: Animals came on Earth first and plants followed. It looks s if plants borrowed an animal protein controller to use for their own preservation. Perhaps God, the designer, makes His job easier by reusing His designs.

Please note that yet again we have evolutionary development for the purpose of survival (“to use for their own preservation”). Perhaps this is an example of how, over millions of years, every cell community has intelligently selected and used information gathered by other cell communities in the process that has resulted in the vast diversity of living forms past and present, including humans.