Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, April 17, 2021, 19:58 (1316 days ago) @ dhw

Survival
DAVID: Sorry about your confusion. Is evolution stepwise as more complexity appears? Each step sets up the appearance of the next step. Perfectly sensible.
And
DAVID: Each new step is an advance from the older steps. All steps required. Until you recognize this necessity you will remain confused.

dhw: Yes, it is sensible, except when you pretend that each step along each of the thousands of diverse branches is a step towards humans! But do tell us how azhdarchid pterosaur was a required “step towards” humans and their food supply.

Part of its particular required ecosystem at its time

DAVID: You always forget the importance of ecosystems at each period of evolution God purposely designed them as self-organizing with top predators. Azhdarchid pterosaur played his necessary role.

dhw: Delighted to hear that your God made them self-organizing. I would extend that principle a lot further than you. Meanwhile, “you always forget” that the great big hole in your theory is your belief that your God “had to” design all these millions of life forms, ecosystems, food supplies, lifestyles and natural wonders in order to produce one life form plus food supply, even though 99% of them had no connection with humans.

Same illogical mantra. God chose to evolve us.

Cambrian
DAVID: The study going back 540 million years about was +/- 200,000 years which means the gap was 200,000 years to 600,000 years, a tiny amount of time to bring all the complex Cambrians into existence , just as Darwin fussed about it, noting no precursors. All you have done is talk around it with no answers.

dhw: You believe that a possible answer is your intelligent God having enough time to design all the new complexities. Why then is it not an answer to propose (theistic version) that your God designed a form of intelligence which would give organisms enough time to design all the new complexities?

DAVID: Again you grant your humanized God second-hand control of the progress in evolution.

dhw: I’m afraid terms like “humanized” and “second-hand” do not offer one iota of logic to contradict my theory or to explain why you think your God could not have invented such a mechanism.

Your humanized God can do anything He wants in your imagination.

Our special gait
DAVID: Yes, you find my view of God's works as controversial. I'm not surprised.

dhw: That’s a relief. You would only have been surprised if you thought you had offered a logical explanation for your theory.

DAVID: For me God is logical. I came from your position. I'm sorry you cannot follow my logic. I know a great deal about biochemistry. Living biochemistry is so highly complex it had to be designed by a designer. There can be no other logical explanation. Since humans have a God theory, why not employ it? That is all I have done.

dhw: Nothing controversial there... But it suits you to harp on about it rather than face the fact that you have no idea why your God “had to” use the totally illogical method you impose on him (designing all the life forms etc. that had no connection with humans) in order to achieve the one and only purpose you impose on him (to design humans).

Same old lack of logical thinking. God chose to evolve us as history shows.

Gene expression like dimmer switch
dhw: Once more, we have support for the idea that cells RESPOND to new requirements. You are, of course, quite right that we don’t understand the mechanisms of control, but autonomous intelligence (perhaps God-given) should be recognized as one possibility.

DAVID: Cells follow God's instructions so they look intelligent. How cells react is by molecular reactions controlled by the genome. How those controls work is a total black box. We are just at the lower levels of the control boxes piled on high.

dhw: Your usual statement of opinion as if it were fact. If we don’t know how the controls work, it is patently absurd to dismiss the possibility that what LOOKS intelligent might actually BE intelligent.

We see genes exert controls. We don't know how they do it. The results are logical and appear designed. How did the cells get so intelligent by themselves. Not naturally. God had to design them that way, by giving them the proper required information.