Bacterial motors carefully studied: Addendum (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, April 14, 2016, 16:00 (3145 days ago) @ David Turell

Re the OC case of Turell v dhw: owing to the failure of the plaintiff to appear before the court on the third day of the hearing, the jury has been instructed to dismiss all charges and award damages to the defendant. The damages will be specified at a later date.-DAVID: Tour's discussion of his difficulties in manufacturing organic molecules simply becomes an argument from incredulity that nature could do this on its own. It seems to me you believe it can. I don't. -Tour attacks the theory of abiogenesis. You have merely substituted “nature” for “chance”. How often do I have to repeat that I do not believe chance could have created life or the mechanism for evolution? However, I see no reason why you should believe your God to have been incapable of creating an evolutionary mechanism that would function without his preprogrammed or personal “guidance”.
 
DAVID: And I cannot explain the arrival of unique organisms, humans, as the result of a free-flowing complexity mechanism that has no need to respond to nature's challenges, but makes giant leaps such as the Cambrian or human consciousness for seemingly no good natural reason.-Nobody can explain innovations, or the Cambrian, or any sort of consciousness, human or otherwise. Nobody can explain your God either. That is why we have so many different theories. However, “responding to nature's challenges” may not be the only natural spur for evolution: I don't know why it should be deemed unnatural, or "no good reason", for some intelligent organisms to exploit nature's opportunities in order to improve themselves (remember, my hypothesis allows for your God endowing them with their intelligence). But I accept the reasons for your questioning the concept of an autonomous inventive mechanism. I only remain surprised by your unwillingness to question the hypothesis that an individual, unknown, sourceless, superintelligent mind deliberately and personally organized every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder (including the weaverbird's nest) throughout the history of evolution in order to produce and feed humans.-DAVID: Tour's incredulity comes from more than his problems with protein synthesis etc. etc. […] I'm with Tour. His problems in the lab make the case: life is improbably complex, and could not have started by chance.-I also share Tour's incredulity. How often do I have to repeat that I do not believe in chance? How often do I have to repeat…? How often do…? That is one of the main reasons why I am not an atheist. I may have said that before too. However, that does not mean God personally organized every single innovation, lifestyle etc. etc. as per your own personal theory of evolution. I may have said… Furthermore, I have similar problems of incredulity regarding a single, unknown, sourceless, superintelligent mind creating billions of solar systems that come and go for no apparent reason...etc. etc. That is one of the main reasons why I am not a theist. I may have...zzzzz...