Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 01, 2021, 13:20 (1061 days ago) @ David Turell

Fungi helped plants
dhw: Please tell us which part of the adaptation process takes place INDEPENDENTLY of your God.

DAVID: Use of the existing epigenetic mechanism by the organism is independent of God.

Thank you. “Use of the existing mechanism” (possibly designed by God) entails processing information from outside, communication between cell communities, and a final decision on when, where and how to use it. Organisms do not “follow instructions” from God, so how can they possibly do all this without some form of autonomous intelligence?

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! […] I am prepared to consider other “guesses”. In this case, that your God did NOT design the “bad” bacteria and viruses, but designed a mechanism whereby all organisms (just like ants) had the freedom to devise their own means of survival. […]

DAVID: So, you go back to my God to solve the problem of what we humans presume is ultimately bad.

What do you mean by “go back to my God”. We are talking about theodicy: why did your God create “bad” (evil or harmful, not poor design) if his “intentions are always good”? Your insistence that he deliberately designed murderous bacteria and viruses, and that he knows everything in advance, makes the problem even more acute! I offer you a different explanation of evil (that he wanted a free-for-all) – but you won’t even consider it.

Clear evidence of common descent
dhw: Firstly, you continue to contradict yourself by claiming that evolution is a continuous process but has gaps and your God invented all species de novo.

DAVID: Of course evolution is continuous over time as God runs it.

How can it be continuous if speciation is de novo? Continuity requires common descent, not “de novo” speciation.

dhw: Secondly, you claim that 10 million years is a short time. Sapiens has been around for approx 315,000 years – and in the last 70,000 years (and especially the last few thousand of these) has transformed the world. What has enabled these astonishing changes? Our intelligence. And where does this intelligence come from? [David's bold]

DAVID: That is your problem, de novo appearance of our brain and mental capacity.

You have interrupted my argument. My proposed answer is cells, and if cells are intelligent, then ten million years is ample time for them to restructure themselves into new forms. I then challenged your insistence that these were created “ne novo” – i.e. without antecedents – and quoted Darwin:
dhw: […] he suspected that “nerves sensitive to touch may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound”. If you think they were all designed “de novo” within ten million years by an outside inventive intelligence (your God), why do you reject outright the possibility that the same God might have given his invention (cells) the intelligence to do its own designing and development of its own designs within the same vast period?

DAVID: Secondhand design, as you wish is much more difficult than hands on. Would you ever have dictated a summary of a play plot and had your assistant produce the script?

A poor analogy. I propose a free-for-all. If I want my actors to improvise, I don’t give them a script and tell them to learn the lines off by heart! What is your objection to your God wanting the ever changing, unpredictable bush that makes up life’s history?

DAVID: ...once again, you are using my God. I suggest your case is stronger if presenting naturally developed brilliant cells by some reasonable natural mechanism. The truth is you can't.

I’m not “using” your God, and we’re not discussing his existence. I’m challenging your illogical claims that evolution is continuous and has gaps, with all life forms being designed “de novo” (the opposite of common descent, which you claim to believe in), and that ten million years would not suffice for the production of all the new species that arose during the Cambrian.

Chaperones required
QUOTE: To reconcile the expanding proteomes, core chaperones have rather increased in cellular abundance and evolved to function cooperatively as a network [...]

DAVID: The design of the origin of life required correcting chaperones and cochaperones from the very beginning. Without arguing about a designer, the design creation had to have had knowledge aforehand of the impending problem a life based on proteins must have. Therefore a mechanism of chaperoning and cochaperoning exists. Natural events do not have foresight. A designer is required.

I shan’t argue about design, but you have no more idea than I have about what was present at the beginning. Yet again I don’t understand why you think solutions must always be present before a problem arises. How do you know your designer didn’t design the chaperones when he found out that a life based on proteins WAS CAUSING problems? You will probably say he knows everything and is always in total control. Maybe he doesn’t and isn’t. Maybe he learns as he goes along. And maybe that even underlies his whole motive for and process of creating life.