Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 15, 2022, 07:15 (782 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Bearing in mind that it is perfectly possible for energy to be provided without us and our fellow animals waging war on one another, please tell us whether the “constant war to survive by eating” was planned by your God or was the unavoidable outcome of his inability to find a system that did not involve such a war?

DAVID: Eating must occur with red in tooth and claw. I don't see how it can work any other way. You want a pacifist evolution?

dhw: How red do teeth become when eaters eat grass, or potatoes or apples? Please tell us whether you think your God planned the constant war or was unable to devise a system that did not demand war.

DAVID: You've shifted to grazing animals, but they can be eaten by predators. The sole point is everyone eats and life runs on energy. Why? Living organisms are dynamically maintaining their homeostasis which requires a constant input of energy.

Of course all living organisms require energy. My point is that energy can be provided without animals eating one another. According to you, God designed every species. Therefore he deliberately designed predators, as he is all-knowing and all-powerful, although he must have known that there are plenty of energy sources apart from meat, and so life could easily continue without animals eating one another. Hence my question: do you think he deliberately planned life as a “constant war to survive by eating”? Or do you think he was unable to devise a system that did not demand war? Please answer.

Carnivorous plants

DAVID: Carnivorous plants can't create digestive enzymes without also simultaneous creating self-protections. Multiple coordinated mutations all at once? Not stepwise Darwinism as you favor.

dhw: Maybe initially some plants died before they perfected the system, just as millions of bacteria die before the survivors perfect their defences.

DAVID: Same blind prayer that step-wise works.

dhw: It works with bacteria, and it even works with humans, since our own history is literally plagued with diseases which kill until we lend your God a helping hand and provide the cures for which he apparently couldn’t plant instructions in our immune system.

DAVID: Our immune system works just fine in an amazingly accurate way 99% of the time. But yes, we have the ability to help out.

dhw: Do you or do you not accept that both bacteria and humans die in large numbers before they find ways of surviving new threats, i.e. that sometimes survival systems develop in stages?

DAVID: No! All organisms are designed from the start of have immunity. You are stuck on naturalism to make an evolutionary process.

You tell us that all aspects of carnivorous plants’ immunity must have been created at the same time. I have pointed out that both bacterial and human immunity take time to develop, since vast numbers may die before a “cure” is found. If God gave them and us instructions right from the beginning, why do so many die before we and bacteria can find the cure? Every death makes it blindingly obvious that the disease and the protection did not arrive simultaneously.