Natures wonders: seabirds food finding flight patterns (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, April 15, 2020, 19:36 (1681 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You love to equate tiny intellectual properties in other species just to diminish the vast difference we exhibit. It doesn't help your cause at all, transparently weak.

dhw: It has nothing to do with the vast difference between their level of intelligence and ours! Is this strategy a sign of intelligence or not? If it is, why do you talk of human guesses on how it might work? If it isn’t, then what other guesses do you have? Generally you insist that all Nature’s wonders (like the weaverbird's nest) are performed by automatons obeying God’s instructions or “guidelines”, whereas I propose that these life forms have autonomous intelligence.

This is not a sign of bird intelligence. It might well be an instinct from trial and error with loss of lots of birds from hunger. We are observing at the end of a developed process, in which God might have had a hand, indicating they always flew this way and we just discovered it, but it is not as complex an issue as multiple different weaverbird knots.

dhw:[…[ As for God’s role, what do you mean “allowed it to evolve”. I thought he specially designed everything. You’re not telling us all of a sudden that he gave organisms the freedom to evolve themselves, are you? Well, that’s a U-turn if ever there was one. Previously, I seem to remember you “humanizing” your God by telling us that he designed these things to test us – but I can’t be sure of that. In any case, you certainly wouldn’t say that now, would you?

DAVID: Yes, I would. Your memory of my thought about these disease challenges is correct. God gave us great brains to try to solve these problems, and note we've solved most, haven't we?

dhw: Why do you think God wants to test us?

You want exactitude. I don't have it, but I would guess God knew viruses were part of His evolution and gave us the brains to handle it. Like the problem of evil, it is your and atheists' problem, not mine

DAVID: As for the bold please follow the full drift of all comments: "Well, He obviously allowed it to evolve," means "it came in the beginning with these attributes present". Both my sentences that have related explanatory meaning! If God is in charge of evolution of course He allows results. Pick, pick, pick without thought analysis!

dhw: You claim that your God directly designed every species, and so of course every species would have come with its attributes present at the beginning (except apparently for whales and humans). So either he directly designed the viruses or they evolved of their own accord. Which is it?

Same demand for exactitude. God create evolution and viruses are part of His plan. Your problem, not mine.

QUOTE (under "T cells"): "Previously people thought that memory T cells had two stages of development, but we discovered there is a whole spectrum of memory experience. From naïve T cells that have never been activated, to highly trained memory T cells which can react quickly, and many intermediate T cells in between. This spectrum not only affects how fast a cell can respond, but even what signals it can respond to."

DAVID: Fighting infections is a lifelong battle. T cells are beautifully designed for the
battle, but not perfectly. They can overreact and cause autoimmune diseases.

dhw: So what is your theory here? Did your God deliberately design the imperfections in order to test human ability to solve the problems with our great brains? Or are these imperfections the result of mechanisms left to organize themselves?

Again, your problem. We know life does not work perfectly, since the constant biochemical activity is at high speed and unfortunately prone to some errors despite the tight controls generally working. Think of congenital errors in newborns.