Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 07, 2021, 11:25 (1116 days ago) @ David Turell

Tectonics and environment
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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: No, the word information is used with great emphasis in ID literature as it relates to the coded instructions in DNA.

The word is used with great emphasis by many people, and it has even been used to tell us that information is the source of life. And such statements show precisely why it is the source of much unnecessary confusion.

Nasty butterflies
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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Morphed by itself into the most complex living being all by itself???

You insist that ALL species, plus their lifestyles and natural wonders, from the simplest to the most complex, had to be directly designed by your God. I propose (theistic version) that he designed the mechanism which enabled ALL species, plus their lifestyles and natural wonders, to morph from simple cells to complex cell communities, from bacteria to dinosaurs, dogs, duckbilled platypuses and humans. The human anatomy is far from being the most complex, but you are clearly referring to one organ, the brain, and we have covered its evolution on the “pre-planning” thread.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: As usual confusing and conflating issues. Eat and be eaten is necessary, while a kindly God might wish to help possums in their self-protection. Perhaps God did not care if He if He made the predators hunt more difficult.

Lovely to see you suggesting that your God might have the wonderfully human attribute of kindliness. But the problem I have is understanding why he should create a mechanism enabling organisms to devise their own ways of killing and eating one another, and yet he can’t create a mechanism enabling them to avoid being killed and eaten. Yes, I do find it confusing. A much clearer theory would be that he created a mechanism whereby organisms could devise their own methods of killing and eating and of avoiding being killed and eaten.