New Miscellany Parts 1 &:2: evolution, eco, intelligence. (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, 11:34 (1 day, 12 hours, 27 min. ago) @ David Turell

Evolution

dhw: The continuum is provided by the survivors, not by the species that cease to exist. You have completely ignored the absurdities (described above) of the theories you have proposed. If 99.9% of species have disappeared leaving no descendants, please tell me what constitutes the “real” continuum.

DAVID: The fallacy in your argument is the extinct did leave descendants, the surviving species.

dhw: By definition, the surviving species did not go extinct!!! 696 species of dinosaur went extinct, 4 species of dinosaur did not go extinct. Those were the survivors! Now please tell us what constitutes the “real” continuum.

DAVID: You have memorized one minor example where four dinosaur species went extinct and left bird survivors. Proves my point: a continuum of extinction and survival.

696 dinosaur species went extinct, and four survivors left descendants!!! At least get the figures right. And now we’re told that a continuum is 99.9% NOT continuous, and 01.% continuous! The dinosaur example confirms your own belief that approx. 99.9% go extinct and approx. 0.1% survive. Why are you trying to pooh-pooh it? Because 1) you insist that your God’s only purpose was to design us plus food, although you also insist that he incomprehensibly designed and culled 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with us plus food; 2) you must pretend that the 99.9% were essential to his purpose although they were not, and that each of the 0.1 was born to multiple species of mummies and daddies, all but one mummy and daddy dying in childbirth. 3) The alternative – also prominent in your arguments – is that despite his omnipotence and omniscience. he is a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer.

Zombification

DAVID: But God's inefficient evolution did create us.

dhw: If God exists, of course his evolution produced us, and it also produced 99.9% of species that had nothing to do with us. Why can’t you believe that instead of being messy, clumsy and inefficient, he might actually have wanted the 99.9% of species that had no connection with us? For example, because he was interested in seeing what his invention (the intelligent cell) might produce in a free-for-all, though he could dabble if he felt like it, or he was interested in experimenting with new ideas. Again: why do you insist that despite his omnipotence and omniscience he kept producing species and ecosystems he didn’t want to produce?

DAVID: God always knew exactly what He was doing. He produced everything He wished.

And that is why he produced 99.9% out of 100% species he did not wish for, and he specially designed zombification because humans could not survive without it.

Caterpillar camouflage

dhw: What makes our thinking “opposite”? Only your insistence that your God couldn’t possibly have given other cells the same autonomy that he gave bacteria.

DAVID: I still insist it.

Bacteria can be autonomously intelligent, but caterpillars can’t. Why not?

Plants using heat

DAVID: an amazing complexity of ways that plants arrange to have a sexual reproduction. Looks designed to me.

dhw: […] The authors reckon the technique originated more than 300 million years ago. Don’t you find it difficult to see how this fits in with your theory that your God created everything for the benefit of us humans?

DAVID: All part of ecosystems that give us food.

dhw: Just like all the ecosystems that came and went for 3,000,000,000+ years before humans arrived on the scene. All created just for us!

Subject dropped.

Mind and cosmos

QUOTES: Intelligence may exist and evolve on its own, without emerging within living organisms.

DAVID: In NDE's the consciousness appears to be separate from the brain.

dhw: Yes, but it retains its individual identity, and it usually links up with other individuals as opposed to linking up with some nebulous “property of the universe”. Meanwhile, perhaps you have answers to some of the questions I’ve asked?

DAVID: The theories come from numerous patient examples of a totally non-functioning brain producing a detailed memory/event.

I know. I’m not arguing against it. I’m pointing out that it’s not the same as the theory we are discussing, because most patients remain themselves and do not somehow link up with some nebulous “property of the universe”.

dhw: The idea that intelligence is an immaterial “ fundamental property of the universe” begs the question of whether the universe would exist if it wasn’t for all its materials. That is one of the great mysteries presented by the God theory: how could consciousness exist on its own without a source? And what would it be conscious of, if nothing else existed? And what is meant by “tapping into” a property outside the brain? Are all our thoughts contained in an outside something or the other, and our non-thinking brain somehow calls on the thoughts to enter it?

I felt these questions were simply glossed over by the author and ignored by you.