Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 06, 2021, 13:05 (1325 days ago) @ David Turell

Tectonics and environment
dhw: […] it is patently absurd to refer to “information as the source of life”, when by information you mean instructions.

DAVID: You have described the way cells must use the information to make life emerge. Without those instructions nothing happens, does it? So what is your objection in the final analysis? The appearance of life depends upon those exact instructions to be followed, and those instructions are information. Stop playing word games please.

The word games are yours. According to you, it is God who writes the instructions and it is God who designs the cells which follow the instructions. Without your God writing the instructions and designing the cells which follow the instructions, nothing happens, does it? So how does that make instructions “the source of life”? And thank you for using the word “instructions” as opposed to “instructional information”. There is simply no need for the latter term, which only causes confusion, as in the heading “information as the source of life”, when in fact you believe that your God is the source of life.

Nasty butterflies
DAVID: You are in total confusion as to how and why God uses control. He doesn't control possums more than He controls us. Possums have free will to use his trick as we have free will. My God doesn't control where my dog poops. Don't you see that most creatures have oodles of free will in action and thought. God has given up control in many logical ways. He doesn't have to control brain expansion, He must do that as designer or He would be derelict in His creationing.

dhw: We are not talking about WHEN or WHERE organisms play dead, migrate, build nests or bridges, but about the ORIGIN of all the strategies and lifestyles. You have suddenly decided that strategies relating to the “war for eating” are “simple adaptations” which God leaves to the organisms themselves to design (e.g. caterpillar cannibalism and rape). But the possum can’t design his trick of “playing dead” in order to avoid being a victim in “the war for eating”! All the same, I’m glad you now concede that your God has given up control in many logical ways. This may be a fruitful concession. I’m not sure what your reference to brain expansion means. You say he doesn’t have to control it (thank you for agreeing with me), but the rest of your sentence seems to say that he does have to control it! A bit of confusion there.

DAVID: The sentence that confuses you simply means God theoretically could give up His enlarging of the homo brain but then sapiens would not appear, so He logically doesn't stop that activity.

Ah! Well of course the converse to that would be that he created a mechanism which allowed autonomous complexification (you agree) and also autonomous expansion (you disagree), and either he knew it would end up with sapiens, or he watched with interest as it morphed into sapiens. Meanwhile, we are still left with the anomaly of an always-in-control God who gives free rein to caterpillar cannibalism and rape, but has to provide possums with a 3.8-billion-year-old programme or special courses on how to play dead in order to avoid being eaten.