Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Tuesday, August 31, 2021, 16:39 (970 days ago) @ dhw

Part One

Antibodies

DAVID: You always twist my statements. You know full well I believe God game cells the instructions of how to take action.

dhw: Now we have your agreement that God did not plant instructions but gave cells the ability to make their own decisions and form new antibodies without his intervention – but 4 weeks later he planted instructions.

How can you twist my statement above? Cells act thru/follow God's genome instructions!!!

Rethinking brain organization

DAVID: Cleared up above: "DAVID: So I'll change it to they act as if autonomous."

dhw: Why do you refuse to contemplate the POSSIBILITY that they ARE autonomous, as you agreed, so emphatically four weeks ago?

Do you deliberately misinterpret my positions? Cells run on God's designed instructions.

New amphibious whale

dhw: It’s a miracle that even this transitional form has been found, but you seem to think that there should be a fossil for every single change in every single organ in every single organism! The alternatives you have given – God versus nature – are misleading. You know perfectly well that my alternative to your God’s 3.8-billion-year-old programme for whale changes, or his regular visits to perform one operation after another, is intelligent cells (possibly designed by your God) responding to the needs of the moment. Once the animal had settled on land, of course the relevant cells would have made the relevant and rapid adjustments to its eating mechanisms. These were essential for its survival.

DAVID: The problem is the gaps in form in our fossil series. I agree. But I see the marked reasons for intense design for each major stage, which keeps you agnostic. I've made a decision, you haven't is our only real difference.

dhw: You are conflating two completely different discussions. It is the complexities of life that help to keep me agnostic, but not the process of evolution. You do not need to add the words “marked” and “intense” to the word “design”: I propose that both minor stages and major stages of development require design, but I dispute the argument that every single one of them, plus every single natural wonder and econiche and lifestyle requires a 3.8-billion-year old computer programme or a personal dabble by your God, especially in view of your theory that every single change was geared to the design of humans and their food. The design could have been carried out by intelligent cells, whose complexities are such that they may well have been designed by your God. This is one of the alternative theistic theories you find perfectly logical but reject because they are different from yours.

What I agree to in the past involved your general view of evolution from the standpoint of a very humanized God who had no clear view of any specific goal and preferred free-for-alls and experimenting, nothing more. Not logical with my view of God. As for brilliant cells doing required design, it is a fantastic extrapolation of cells/bacterial known abilities to make small required adjustments, but always remaining the same species, as in Lenski's E. coli.