Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Friday, January 08, 2021, 11:14 (1413 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your contorted complaint is simply a recitation of what evolution does, and it is my belief God does it, by designing all stages.

dhw: You have no idea why, if his sole purpose was to design H. sapiens, he first directly designed millions of life forms and econiches that had no connection with humans.

DAVID: I don't need to know why. You do, and can't explain it either. It is just God's choice.

You do not “know” that designing millions of non-human life forms etc. WAS your God’s choice of method in order to fulfil the single purpose of designing H. sapiens. Both premises (design everything, one purpose) are YOUR choice as an explanation of life’s history. But you are right, neither of us can explain YOUR choice, and that is why you agreed that you had no idea why your God would have chosen such a method to fulfil such a purpose. Meanwhile, you have agreed that all my alternative versions of method and purpose are logical, but you prefer your inexplicable version. I wish you would leave it at that.

Cambrian Explosion

dhw: QUOTE: "For about 4 million years, human evolution has been a long, long process. From the early hominids to modern humans…”

DAVID: The difference in time is the pre-hominins that existed after the breakaway. I won't bother to list the species for this discussion.

Thank you. I’m quite happy to accept the 6 million figure anyway. The crucial point was your statement that the new finds show that “there certainly isn’t an abrupt dividing line in evolution”. This removes the great question mark over the Cambrian’s sudden explosion of entirely new species. If there were precursors, 55 million years seems to me to be ample time for further speciation, especially if we embrace the concept of cellular intelligence responding to new conditions and opportunities.

Cosmology

QUOTE: "But the meaning of eROSITA’s mushroom clouds is clear: Something went bang in the center of the Milky Way around 15 million to 20 million years ago, around the same time hyenas and weasels were emerging on Earth.”

DAVID: […] it always tums out the weird is necessary, and makes us agree God knows what He is doing and how everything we see must be necessarily designed for creation.

dhw: I really don’t know why a bang in the centre of the Milky Way 15-20 million years ago “makes us agree that God knows what he is doing”, or what it has to do with creation, since life goes back thousands of millions of years.

DAVID: The issue is the Milky Way evolution starting from 1.8 billion years post Big bang, all in preparation for us starting only six mya.

You said it was all “necessarily designed for creation”. The article concerns a bang thousands of millions of years after life began! Are you saying that in order for your God to fulfil his one and only purpose of designing humans, it was not only necessary for him to directly design hyenas and weasels, but he also had to set off a bang in the Milky Way 9-14 million years before he could design the first pre-hominins? Curiouser and curiouser.

Genome complexity

dhw: The quote highlights the continuity of evolution through the activities of cells, and I agree with you: belief in chance requires blind faith, and the complexities of the cell are the strongest evidence for design. However, I need not repeat the problems I have regarding an eternally conscious, sourceless designer.

DAVID: Would you be happier with a flesh and blood designer, the kind we can easily recognize?

Of course not. I am not “happy” with any of the theories on offer. That is why I remain agnostic.

Junk DNA

DAVID: Most DNA is purposeful which means it developed from design rather than by chance. The 'junk theory' to support Darwinism is totally dead as this article demonstrates.

Just to repeat earlier comments on this: I agree about design, but there is no reason at all why a Darwinist should not argue that natural selection explains the survival of anything that is useful. In other words, the purposefulness of DNA supports Darwinism, but it does not support those Darwinists who attempt to use junk DNA as an argument against design.

Biological complexity (two articles)

DAVID: A cell is organized soup with multiple side-by-side reaction The design of the complex processes is extremely detailed. Never by chance.

DAVID: A designer required. Without the pores working from the start along with all the processes functioning life couldn't work.

This is where I must redress the balance of my own comments on most of the articles you quote. Biological complexity even at the microscopic level of a single cell is too great for me to believe in chance as the creator of life.

Crocodiles

QUOTE: "The rate of their evolution is generally slow, but occasionally they evolve more quickly because the environment has changed. In particular, this new research suggests that their evolution speeds up when the climate is warmer, and that their body size increases.”

Although this is adaptation and not speciation, it emphasizes the crucial link between cellular change and current conditions. The body size increases in response to the warmer climate – not in anticipation of it!