Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, April 01, 2021, 17:59 (1122 days ago) @ dhw

Introducing the brain
DAVID: How else to explain the time delay in the brain?

dhw: The tiny time delay (half a second) might just possibly be explained by the fact that the sensation of pain has to travel from the finger to the brain, but the tiny time delay is so tiny that most people would think the sensation was immediate.

DAVID: Funny the trained neurosurgeon didn't understand that!

dhw: Apparently he didn’t want to understand it because according to you he only wanted to demonstrate how the soul works.

Egnor fudges his knowledge of neurology? You are only sniping.

Tectonics and environment
DAVID: Using information that exists runs the process of living, and new forms are based on new information. The issue the source of the new information, more complex than the old info. I choose God.

dhw: The source of new information would seem to be changes in living conditions which either demand or allow changes in behaviour and/or the anatomy. Plants would not need to develop responses to drought if there was no drought.

DAVID: Living condition changes represent new external information. I'm discussing the source of new internal DNA information to handle the changes. Why dodge the point?

dhw: You see how very confusing it is when you use the term “information” so loosely? I would say that the DNA needs to make changes to itself (we don’t need to use the term “information” here) in order to handle the new information arising out of changes in conditions.

You always struggle with the concept of information. The DNA code offers information at all times to control organisms actions. With new environment the genome receives sensory new information and the must develop new instructional information for the organism to respond with the proper adaptation. Please recognize the different forms of information required.

Nasty butterflies
QUOTES: Take this zebra longwing, Heliconius charithonia. It looks innocent enough.
"But it’s also famously poisonous, and its caterpillars are cannibals that eat their siblings. And that’s hardly shocking compared with its propensity for something called pupal rape.”

DAVID: Who knew? All part of the ecosystems they are in.

dhw: But also part of the overall picture, in which you have your God directly designing all the different organisms, strategies and lifestyles. What sort of mind deliberately designs life forms that eat and rape their siblings? Or is it possible that your God DIDN’T deliberately design them, but that they are the product of a free-rein evolution in which all life forms devise their own strategies and lifestyles?

God designed "red in tooth and claw". Everyone has to eat. Eating is the purposeful free-for-all.