Immunity: Gamma Delta T cells hunt with precision (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, November 26, 2018, 12:05 (1978 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Your one step further is to say that only your God can design innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders, including such items as 50,000 different spider webs, different stages of whale, and the weaverbird’s nest. My theistic proposal is that your God may have designed the mechanism that enables organisms to do their own designing, but I keep agreeing that there is no proof that this mechanism may be responsible for major changes.

DAVID: Innovations are not minor adaptations.

I know. That is why I keep repeating that we have no proof that the mechanism for adaptation is also capable of innovation. We have no proven explanation for innovation, which is why we hypothesize.

DAVID: My belief is unchanged. God is in control even if an inventive mechanism exists. I have no idea why you want God to give up full control. I realize as an agnostic, you can invent any kind of God you want. I'll stick with religion's view of Him as a Supreme Being.

Theists like yourself can and do invent any kind of God they want. If he exists, I have no quarrel with the concept of your God as a Supreme Being. That does not mean he does not have any characteristics in common with ourselves – who according to the bible are made in his image. I do not “want” him to give up full control. My theistic hypothesis is that he deliberately gave up full control (as below), and this explains the higgledy-piggledy history of life on Earth. Your own reading of his mind – that he created 50,000 spider webs etc. etc. in order to produce humans – makes no sense even to you, which is why you keep telling us his logic is different from ours.

DAVID: I've agreed that is possible, but all it does is keep God in control if he mechanisms have guidelines.

dhw: Why the if clause with "guidelines"? My theistic proposal is that he did not WANT to keep control, which is why he allowed his mechanism to do its own autonomous designing. Much more interesting than watching billions of automatons do exactly what you want them to do.

DAVID: "Much more interesting" is again humanizing Him which you can't resist doing.

That does not make my hypothesis illogical, and in any case you have frequently told us you think your God is watching us with interest. (See also under "Neanderthal".)

DAVID: My objection, as always, is that it takes mental planning to create advanced designs as required by the gaps in the fossil record.

dhw: Gaps in the fossil record may be the result of saltations, but in any case they do not require your God to have designed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in advance of the changing conditions in which each new organism lives.

DAVID: A non-answer, Popping in the word 'saltations' applies a label to gaps. But what makes the saltation (which by definition is a new design) happen. What is the agency that causes saltation?

Nobody knows. You propose a divine 3.8-billion-year computer programme or direct divine dabbling. I propose a possibly God-given, autonomous intelligence.