Biological complexity: managing cellular oxygen levels (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, November 02, 2019, 19:09 (1635 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Sorry. I was taught to march. it required understanding and responding to teaching instructions. Ants don't like to bump into each other. They simply follow the leader with spacing[

dhw: Humans don’t like to bump into each other. They therefore devised a system of marching to prevent bumping, and passed on the method to later generations. Ants don’t like to bump into each other. They therefore devised a system of marching to prevent bumping, and passed on the method to later generations. Humans follow the leader with spacing. Ants follow the leader with spacing. You believe that 3.8 billion years ago, your God provided the first cells with a programme for the creation of ants (plus millions of other life forms) and for the strategies of marching and bridge-building (plus billions of other strategies, lifestyles and natural wonders for all the other life forms) which ants would automatically and unconsciously switch on when needed. Humans, on the other hand, were given the ability to devise the same strategies without any such programme. My purely subjective opinion is that a 3.8-billion-year-old programme for ant-marching and bridge-building and every other life form, strategy etc. in the history of life is more than a teeny bit harder to believe in than the ability of ants and other life forms to work out their own strategies. But of course you are entitled to believe whatever you want.

DAVID: Well, we each have a version. We at least agree they don't have our introspection.

dhw: At least you have not accused me of distorting your beliefs. Your book The Atheist Delusion is subtitled Science IS Finding God and you make brilliant use of science to argue the case for design and hence for a designer. In my view, this argument should be taken with the utmost seriousness by the scientific world. But I shudder to think what the scientific world would make of the theory I have summarized above!

I didn't bother with my usual response, since you do not understand how irrational your objection seems to me.