Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 04, 2021, 16:37 (997 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: New antibodies to new threats are made by following instructions that exist from birth.

dhw: Do you mean that your God planted instructions on how to create each individual new antibody for each new future threat? Or do you mean that he gave our cells the ABILITY to recognize each new threat and to respond to it by creating new antibodies de novo without him having to intervene?

You've got it!!! The latter portion of your comment is exactly what God did!

Larvae use virus for immunity
DAVID: God obviously knew flippers were a requirement.

dhw: A requirement for what, if not for improving their chances of survival?

DAVID: Helping survival doesn't advance speciation.

dhw: So you agree that legs changing to flippers helped pre-whales to survive, but apparently legs changing to flippers do not advance speciation! The same argument, then, for every adaptation/innovation that “helped survival”. If speciation happens when parts of the body are changed, and if the changes help those organisms to survive, how can you possibly believe that “helping survival doesn’t advance speciation”?

Interesting word game. God obviously makes flippers as part of a new species, built for survival. Survival of the fittest did not make a new species, God did..

Retinal design allows prediction of movement

DAVID: My comment was ignored: "Comment: pure initial design. If this required stepwise development over massive amounts of time, hunting animals would not have survived to evolve the process."

It was not ignored. You quoted my answer, and commented on it:
dhw: How massive is massive? It is perfectly possible that a nerve’s rudimentary sensitivity to light should be advantageous, and that in time, increased sensitivity should prove even more advantageous. Even now, different animals have different degrees of vision, hearing and smell. Do you think your God kept stepping in to adjust them all?

DAVID: Pure Darwinist think. The fossil record does not how gradualism, remember?

dhw: That is why I asked how massive is massive? We have no idea how long it would have taken the dog to develop its extraordinary sense of smell. But it is totally absurd to expect to find fossils of every single stage of dog-nose development. Now please answer my question – do you think your God stepped in to adjust the different degrees of vision, hearing and smell?

Design means a complex plan is formed all at once, and cannot be stepwise.