Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, August 19, 2021, 15:31 (982 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: My totally unchanged position is the cells use God's instructions to do their work. Your bold above says exactly that, which it seems you didn't mean.

dhw: My (bolded) ability – explicitly and enthusiastically endorsed by you - is the exact opposite of the alternative that precedes it, i.e. obeying instructions. You have really entered Alice in Wonderland territory if you expect anyone to believe that an autonomous ability actually means automatically obeying instructions.

DAVID: You don't agree that cells follow specific instructions as I do. Let's drop the word games.

dhw: It is you who are playing word games. You explicitly endorsed the proposal that your God gave cells the autonomous ability to create new antibodies without his intervention, and now you are pretending that an autonomous ability means obeying instructions.

What I agreed to is with the instructions God gave the cells, they c an/do act autonomously

The role of survival in evolution

DAVID: I didn't realize you knew how speciation occurred!!! You are back to bit by bit adaptations leading to new species. I'll stick with God speciates and makes sure existing species know how to survive.

dhw: Nobody knows how the mechanisms for anatomical change actually work. Nor can we draw a precise borderline between adaptation and innovation. We can’t even pinpoint what constitutes a change from one species to another. But if you consider that a flippered pre-modern whale is a different species from a leggy pre-modern whale, then yes, in some cases I would say that bit by bit adaptations lead to speciation, just as more rapid innovations do. However, this is a digression from the topic of survival. I don’t know why you have switched from speciation to “existing species”. Speciation involves change, and you believe that your God designed the changes to make sure the particular life form survived. It is therefore absurd to argue that the changes your God made to each life form had nothing to do with survival.

Survival is required for each new stage until the next stage appears. Survival does not create the next stage.

Retinal design allows prediction of movement

dhw: Do ID-ers all support your belief that different degrees of vision etc. were all designed at once, and do ID-ers all support your belief that your God created species by individually designing every single anatomical change BEFORE it was required by changing conditions, and not IN RESPONSE to changing conditions? A simple yes or no will do.

DAVID: How can I be clearer? Irreducible complexity means all designed at once, with the reasonable conclusion, always in advance of function.

dhw: A yes or a no would have been a lot clearer. I take it then that ID-ers claim that there has been no development involved in, say, the modern dog’s sense of smell as compared to that of its pre-doggy ancestors. And God operated on pre-whales to turn their legs into flippers before they entered the water, as opposed to whales entering the water first, with legs adapting to the new environment by eventually turning into flippers.

DAVID: The dog's sense of smell comes from their wolf ancestors.

dhw: Yes, wolves have an equally acute sense of smell. Do you believe that the wolfie-doggy sense of smell was already present in pre-wolfie-doggies, or do you believe that the earlier sense of smell improved over the thousands and thousands of years?

The sense of smell is a highly complex system previously described here. I believe as wolves appeared their smell ability was complete with possible minor improvement by adaptation to come over time

DAVID: You answers appears to show you understand the concept of irreducible complexity. Flagella are the typical example.

dhw: Fine. Do ID-ers believe that your God changed legs to flippers before pre-whales entered the water, as opposed to legs becoming flippers after entry into the water?

Must I repeat? Irreducible complexity means designed in advance. Applies to flippers and everything else