Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Sunday, December 27, 2020, 11:14 (1425 days ago) @ David Turell

Fine tuning
DAVID: Your usual complaint, God shouldn't have done it that way.

dhw:[…] I suggest that you stick with your occasional response: namely, you have no idea why he would have chosen the theoretical means of fulfilling the theoretical purpose bolded at the start of this post. We could leave it at that.[…]

DAVID: You are correct. I have no idea why He uses that method.

dhw: Thank you. That is the acknowledgement I asked for. I suggest we leave it at that.

DAVID: Fine

dhw:

dhw: Please stop backpedalling.

DAVID: I'll stop when you drop the ridiculous commenting about God using evolution to produce us every chance you get. It pops up everywhere. Note the bold below. You can't resist the urge.

I will only stop if you stop repeating the logical parts of your theory - as if somehow they justified the illogical parts - and misrepresenting my objections. You have reiterated that “God designed all stages of evolution” and “God prefers to evolve all his creations” (though you equate evolution with direct design), the logic of which by itself I do NOT dispute if we accept God’s existence. But then you wrongly say my complaint is “God shouldn’t have done it this way”, and “what you object to is my statement that humans were His eventual goal”. I keep repeating my objection in bold, which is to the illogical COMBINATION of your premises: that if your God’s sole purpose was to design H. sapiens, why would he have directly designed millions of extinct life forms that had no connection with humans? What reply do you expect from me, when you misrepresent my objections and continue to leave out the illogicalities that have been the subject of this discussion right from the start?

Egnor’s latest

DAVID: I have always believed dogs have animal souls. Since ants communicate, they can be said to have souls.

dhw: Thank you. It would be fascinating to know what they think about when they haven’t got to worry about food and self-defence!

DAVID: They don't think, but react.

So what function do you think is performed by their souls?

The gut
DAVID: The vagus nerve, the tenth cranial nerve, directly connected to the brain keeps tabs on what is going on but the system really is autonomous and runs the show. This is not new knowledge. I learned this in medical school. The details are new, especially the new findings that the gut biome can affect our emotions. The design is not by chance.

dhw: A wonderful example of how all the different cell communities are linked together in the one community we call the body. The very fact that these material organisms can change our emotions – and with them, our thoughts – once again implies materialism.

DAVID: Please accept that chemicals do modify basic brain functioning which will modify what thoughts the soul can create using the brain networks as its only means of creating thought.

I am the one who asks you to accept that chemicals which affect our brains also affect our thoughts, and this suggests that our brains are the source of our thoughts. We needn’t pursue the argument here, though, as it is dealt with in detail on the Egnor thread.

Sticky cells
DAVID: this is all under tight instructions from an intelligent design. Developmental embryology is a complete refutation of Darwin's theory. A chance development of this process is impossible.

dhw: It is a refutation of the theory that evolution depends on random mutations. We have long since agreed that this aspect of Darwin’s theory is, to say the least, highly suspect. It is not, however, a complete refutation of Darwin’s theory, and I do wish you would stop taking the part for the whole!

DAVID: I'll grant you common descent which is simply obvious. I'm happy which Arthur Russel Wallace.

Once more, developmental embryology is not a complete refutation of Darwin’s theory, regardless of what you think is obvious, and regardless of Wallace.