Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Monday, June 14, 2021, 14:28 (1049 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Define dodging in a debate. I strongly feel I am answering honestly about my beliefs and theories.

dhw: The most blatant of examples is when someone is asked a question and avoids answering it. You see it all the time in political interviews. In your case, the question is: why would a purposeful, all-powerful God whose sole purpose is to design H. sapiens (plus lunch), have specially designed millions of life forms, lunches, lifestyles, strategies, natural wonders etc., 99% of which had no connection with H. sapiens?...the fact is you can’t provide an explanation for what in fact is inexplicable, as you yourself occasionally admit until once more you insist that the theory is logical. It isn’t, and so we begin the same round of question from me and dodges from you.

DAVID: You have admitted God in charge can chose to do what He wishes to do. History displays God's actions. Therefore what is logical is God chose His method of producing humans by historical evolution. Your complaint is a dispute with God's logic as I view it. And as for your complaint that I can't explain why God did it that way, I just accept it.

And yet again you edit your theory to leave out the part which is illogical! Of course if God exists, history displays his actions. Of course those of us who accept the theory of evolution believe that humans were produced by evolution. And I am not questioning why God might have chosen evolution as the method to achieve his purposes. If he exists, then he invented evolution. But in your edited summary you have left out the fact that evolution produced millions of life forms and lunches that had no connection with humans, and you insist that all of them were specially designed. If his one and only purpose was to create humans and their lunch, it makes no sense that he would have specially designed millions of life forms and lunches that had no connection with humans. STOP DODGING!

Clear evidence of common descent
dhw: Once more: do you believe that every life form (apart from the first) is descended from a previous life form, or every life form was created from scratch (de novo)?

DAVID: Many life forms are modifications of previous species: birds came from a branch of dinosaurs, and their design did not require a complete rewrite. I pose God as the rewriting engineer which gives us descent with modification. Frankly the only full de novo I know is the Cambrian explosion.

dhw: Thank you. Of course common descent entails modification – otherwise there would be no speciation! As regards the Cambrian, you do not “know” that species were designed “de novo”. You assume they were because of the absence of fossils, and because some scientists express disbelief that new species could evolve by chance during such a short period of time. See the separate post for my response to you and Bechly.

Ingenious research tricks
DAVID: Cell intelligence (dhw theory) can't create this. Only a highly-advanced designing mind can.

dhw: I’m not proposing that the cell’s intelligence created the way in which it functions! The research (vividly) reveals the mechanisms. It can’t reveal the intelligence that controls the mechanisms, any more than it can reveal your God’s 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for all its transformations.

DAVID: My same purpose: as we reveal the complexity of life's processes only a superior designing mind must exist.

dhw: But we should separate Chapters One and Two of life’s processes. Your God may have designed the original mechanisms and processes involved in Chapter One (Darwin himself allows for that), which would include the cellular intelligence championed by certain distinguished scientists, but that does not mean God must have designed Chapter Two, which is the speciation that constitutes evolution.

DAVID: Separating origin of life and evolution of life is a debating crutch to avoid the issues involved in a debate about God.

No it’s not. The debate concerns how speciation works, and for that purpose, I am quite happy for argument’s sake to accept the existence of God (as was Darwin). You use this argument in order to avoid discussing the illogicality of your theory concerning your God’s intentions and methods. God inventing cellular intelligence to run evolution is just as theistic as God dabbling or providing a 3.8-billion-year old computer programme for the whole of life’s history.

Dark matter
QUOTES: "Colliding clusters cannot obey different gravitational rules from non-colliding ones."
"Inescapably, dark matter must therefore exist."

“Dark” here means totally unknown. So all they are telling us is that there is something unknown that holds the universe together. Giving an unknown something a name makes it seem nice and official, but it doesn't tell us much, does it?