Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 08, 2021, 13:15 (1054 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I admit if one looks at all 3.8 billion years of God's evolution mountains as in the Cambrian Explosion, which, by the way, bothered Darwin more than you.

dhw: What do you admit?

DAVID: I view cell intelligence as cells following God's DNA instructions which include how to decode the instructions.

You have now disowned your earlier statement that organisms use your God’s mechanisms INDEPENDENTLY for minor adaptations. You refuse to say whether independent processing of information, communication and decision-making are or are not signs of intelligence, and after my questions about 3.8 billion years’ worth of “algorithms” to cover every single eventuality past, present and future, you began with “I admit…” but won’t say what you admit.

dhw: I am pointing out that if organisms (not just plants but all forms of life) have the autonomous intelligence to create minor adaptations, it is possible that they can do the same with major changes.

DAVID: The bold is your overarching cell intelligence theory based on the agreed-upon appearance of cell intelligence from all the cell activity we observe from the outside […]

Correct. It was agreed upon but now you’ve backtracked.

DAVID: […] but could come from God's instructions inside, based on a 50/50 probability I originally offered. I'm on the God side of the slash mark and you on the no-God side.

You did not offer 50/50 when you agreed that organisms acted INDEPENDENTLY when they used the God-given mechanism. I am not on the no-God side. I allow for your God as the inventor of cellular intelligence. What I oppose, in case you’ve forgotten, is the claim that your God individually preprogrammed or dabbled every single innovation, lifestyle, natural wonder etc. in the history of life – and all of them were “part of the goal of evolving [= specially designing] humans.”

Clear evidence of common descent
dhw: As for continuity, the only form of it that you are offering is that the same maker made every species. The actual history of evolution, according to you, is one jump after another.

DAVID: The bold is Darwinist Gould's original observation, not mine.

You continually talk about the gaps between species (there is no fossil record), and try to use them as evidence that only God could have designed the new organs/organisms. “De novo” entails a jump, not a continuation!

dhw: [...]We should not forget that the reason for your insistence on “continuity” is your desperate attempt to prove that all life forms are/were “part of the goal of evolving [= specially designing] humans”. (Otherwise why have you raised the subject?) I’m sorry, but even your definition of continuity does not explain why he designed the brontosaurus in order to design you and me.

DAVID: Unfortunately you've lost the fact that the complexity in evolution builds in stages from the past. Bronto is now the lizards and lizard-like organisms that fill a portion of the ecosystems that feed the other existing organisms. God ("the same maker") supplies the continuity. I do not accept Darwin's common descent, I accept Gould's.

I didn’t know Gould was a proponent of Creationism, and he certainly didn’t know it either. Was he deluding himself when he said he was an atheist? All organisms either feed on or are fed on by other organisms. That does not mean that all organisms were specially designed by your God as part of his one and only goal to produce humans.

Complexity of connections
" “The entire data set we produced is a cubic millimetre, which is usually one pixel in an MRI scan,” he says. “It’s interesting to uncover all the stuff under the hood of one pixel of an MRI.” (David’s bold)

And indeed it’s astonishing to think of all the stuff contained in a couple of hundred nanometres (the size of some bacteria), and if one considers the intelligence shown by even these tiniest organisms, imagine how over thousands of millions of years, tiny cells might combine in their billions to create all kinds of living things, from plants and funguses all the way through to elephants, whales and human beings.

Evolution of the universe
DAVID: The universe had to evolve just as life did when the universe reached a point of fine-tuning to allow life. dhw with his human brain attempts to question God's reasons for a universe that looks like ours does. It allows him to question God's existence. We may never find all of God's reasons. That doesn't cause Him to disappear, does it?

Your usual desperate attempt to divert attention from your illogical theories by pretending that I am trying to get rid of God. I AM AN AGNOSTIC. I query your illogical theory of evolution, and I offer alternative THEISTIC theories. My reasons for not embracing theism have nothing to do with these discussions.

“Hippocampal connections” And also “another helper molecule”
DAVID: When such an exact functioning molecule is found, repelling and attracting, I always wonder how chance evolution found it. There is no such thing as natural evolution.

I agree that chance evolution could not have organized these complexities, and I do NOT reject the idea of God as the designer. But that does not preclude his design of a cellular intelligence which would enable life forms to evolve autonomously.