Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Friday, April 02, 2021, 17:24 (1121 days ago) @ dhw

Introducing the brain
dhw: Apparently he didn’t want to understand it because according to you he only wanted to demonstrate how the soul works.

DAVID: Egnor fudges his knowledge of neurology? You are only sniping.

dhw: There is no fudging of His knowledge of neurology. He simply takes the existence of a soul for granted, and tries to use the half-second gap to show us how the soul works. You asked how else one could explain the time delay of half a second, and I told you. Please tell me why you reject my explanation.

I can tell the difference in a half-second of time. Touching a hot pan or a pinprick. Watching the phlebotomist take blood, instantaneous pain.

Tectonics and environment

dhw: You see how very confusing it is when you use the term “information” so loosely? I would say that the DNA needs to make changes to itself (we don’t need to use the term “information” here) in order to handle the new information arising out of changes in conditions.

DAVID: You always struggle with the concept of information. The DNA code offers information at all times to control organisms actions. With new environment the genome receives sensory new information and the must develop new instructional information for the organism to respond with the proper adaptation. Please recognize the different forms of information required.

dhw: I find its double use confusing and totally unnecessary. Information itself is passive. It achieves nothing. It has to be used. The cells process information from the new environment and work out what changes they need to make in order to adapt. What could be clearer? You believe your God planted instructions which cells automatically switched on. Why do you have to call them “instructional information”?

Still confusion: sensory information is not instructional information. Both exist. Sensory is passive, while instructional describes actions to be taken .

Nasty butterflies

dhw: But also part of the overall picture, in which you have your God directly designing all the different organisms, strategies and lifestyles. What sort of mind deliberately designs life forms that eat and rape their siblings? Or is it possible that your God DIDN’T deliberately design them, but that they are the product of a free-rein evolution in which all life forms devise their own strategies and lifestyles?

DAVID: God designed "red in tooth and claw". Everyone has to eat. Eating is the purposeful free-for-all.

dhw: Yes, indeed. All the organisms find their own ways of obtaining food, and all their strategies for eating and for avoiding being eaten, are part of a purposeful free-for-all in the quest for survival. Sounds like a convincing theory to me. Thank you for your support.

I'm only describing the war for eating.

Chixculub
DAVID: Gerald Schroeder in his books about science and God wondered if God sent Chixculub. So do I.

dhw: And I wonder if either of you asks why he would have created the dinosaurs and their habitat in the first place, and then destroyed them all, if his one and only goal was to design sapiens and he was always in total control.

Perhaps you can learn to consider the real God who knows exactly what He is doing.