Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Sunday, May 30, 2021, 15:51 (1063 days ago) @ dhw

Fungi helped plants

DAVID: I don't understand your confusion. God designed epigenetic mechanism into organisms. The organisms then use them independently as minor adaptations are required by changes.

dhw: ... If the God-given mechanism for change is used autonomously, what “instructions” are you talking about? Straight question: Do the cells work out how and when to use the mechanism (= autonomous intelligence) or not?

Placing methyl ions epigenetically in the DNA must follow instructions.

Ant raids

dhw: Thank you for agreeing explicitly that ants have autonomous intelligence, i.e. they do not have to follow your God’s “instructions”.

I would assume the ants have leader types who make choices of action and the others automatically follow.

Neutron stars

DAVID: I'm not guessing. I believe God's intentions are always good. And history re God's 'bad designs' as perceived by humans supports me.

dhw: Of course you’re guessing. It’s a belief, not knowledge! Non-bad designs (e.g. the retina) have nothing to do with theodicy, which concerns “bad” in the sense of evil or harmful – as in your fixed belief that your God deliberately designed viruses and bacteria that cause untold suffering. Why do you guess they're beneficial? Why don’t you wait till you have “the full story”?

Your view of God's 'bad actions' is a guess also. The history of such judgements is that with enough research they turn out wrong judgements of Gods action.

Clear evidence of common descent

dhw: It is absurd to claim that just because all life forms use DNA, all life forms are “part of the goal of evolving [= specially designing] humans”. There is no such “continuity”.

dhw: “De novo” automatically means discontinuity!

DAVID: The Cambrian discontinuity requires a continuing designer. You can't have it both ways!

dhw: It is you who want it both ways! You claim that evolution is continuous, and then you tell us there are gaps and evolution is discontinuous, with your God inventing species de novo! I suggest that evolution IS continuous, as all species have branched out from earlier species. And I propose that the millions of years of the Cambrian would have sufficed for intelligent cell communities to produce all the new species that appeared in response to changing conditions. And I suggest it is unreasonable to expect a continuous fossil record of every organism’s evolutionary history over the last three thousand million years.

So the enormous gap evidenced by the initial Cambrian organisms appearing over just 10 million years (previously presented here) doesn't bother you but plagued Darwin and also the current Darwinist's research to destroy the gap without any helpful results. Just your wishful thinking. Sacks of cells were so bright they invented the Trilobites with eyes, nerve cells and several different organ systems.