Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Wednesday, January 27, 2021, 01:49 (1397 days ago) @ dhw

Darwin scientists find useless evolution

dhw: If cells know the rules and break them, clearly he designed the cells in such a way that they would know the rules and be free to break them!

DAVID: Mistaken folding or bad reactions are pure mistakes, not willful mischief, as you distort biochemistry.

dhw: There is no distortion of biochemistry. We are dealing with the same “mistakes”, but please note that we have now diverged from the article we began with, which dealt with a useless but harmless molecular mechanism, and are back on the subject of theodicy. I am challenging the claim that a design with “errors” is a good design,

I still challenge this as a distortion of the understanding of function of living biochemistry that forms life. You recognize the high speed needed, with trillions of reaction occurring constantly. In the soup the molecules either react properly to exactitude of action but being free in the soup, means free to make a mistake so they are really free to react improperly. In my opinion. It cannot be rigidly correct 100% of the time. Life requires the high speed in a soup. God cannot do it better, and that doesn't make Him a bad designer as you like to imply. This is the best that can be done. And 3.8 by's prove the point. We are here despite all your worry about the errors. Not as bad as your view.

Repairing DNA breaks
DAVID: We still see that mistakes can happen when molecules are acting and BIR is not a perfect solution. Perhaps perfection is impossible even with God in charge of possible designs.

dhw: Perhaps your God did not seek perfection.

I think He couldn't

Controlling rate of RNAs

DAVID: processes need speed controls and this is one of them. It reeks of design. Note my bold. The high speed of these processes is illustrated, from our knowledge that the bacteria replicating every 20 minutes. Occasional molecular mistakes must be expected.

dhw: Agreed. You always moan that a God who deliberately designed a free-for-all is somehow weak. Don’t you think a God who designed something which was bound to make “mistakes”, and tried but often failed to correct them, is weaker than a God who designs what he wants to design?

I accept the fact without a moan, He cannot create something that lives with no molecular mistakes. Bothers you more than me.

Plants control carbon cycle

QUOTE: After all, if a bunch of dumb ferns could naturally perform carbon sequestration on such a tremendous scale, why couldn’t clever humans deliberately do the same thing?

dhw: This is an amazing idea! At a stroke it could remove all the agonizing over how to combat climate change without any radical changes to our civilisation. I wonder why it hasn’t been followed up.

QUOTE: "The Azolla Event was an environmental catastrophe for life in the Eocene epoch.”

DAVID: The article goes on to discuss humans using plants to control CO2 on Earth and maintain balances within tight limits. It has been designed to run by itself until humans arrived to upset the balances. But it should be noted the range of CO2 concentrations, both high and low are way beyond anything currently happening.

dhw: Yeah, the Azolla Event was a catastrophe for life before humans arrived to upset the balances and cause catastrophes. Well done, Nature.

DAVID: The real point is CO2 has been up and down in vast shifts all through Earth history. The current manufactured hysteria is all political from the UN to get more money to poor third world countries. There are better charitable ways.

dhw: I don’t wish to enter into discussions on the validity or the current politics of climate change. You harp on about humans upsetting the balance of Nature, on which we both agree. But you also agree that the balance of Nature has constantly shifted throughout life’s history, with catastrophe after catastrophe. So do you think all these pre-human catastrophes (plus less dramatic local changes) were directly designed by your God to destroy most of the life forms you think he had directly designed up to then? Or do you think the catastrophes (plus less dramatic local events) might have been the result of a specially designed system of random environmental changes requiring new responses from the life forms exposed to them? The question is of major importance in the light of your theory of evolution.

I think God is in control of the original design of the overall weather pattern systems. My entries into 'privileged planet' show that.