Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Sunday, April 18, 2021, 12:51 (1106 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

DAVID: Part of its particular required ecosystem at its time.

And how on earth does that come to mean that the particular ecosystem at its time was “a required step” towards the special design of humans and their ecosystems?

dhw: […] “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.

DAVID: Same illogical mantra. God chose to evolve us.

Cracked record: According to you, your God chose to evolve [= specially design] every life form, econiche etc. that ever existed, and...for the thousandth time...99% had no connection with us or our food supply. You know that it doesn’t make sense, but since you are unwilling to consider any alternative reading of history, we should leave it at that – at least until the next time you produce your “illogical mantra”.

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.

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

Of course – and so can yours. That still doesn’t explain why you think your God, who apparently specially designed us and our autonomous intelligence, could not also have endowed other organisms with their own form of autonomous intelligence.

DAVID (under “dimmer switch”): 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.

I like your question, and thank you for at last acknowledging that cells are intelligent (though no doubt you will withdraw that in your next post). But I never said the cells got “so intelligent by themselves”. If you’re telling us that your God must have designed their intelligence, I’m not going to argue with the logic of your “design” argument. I’m an agnostic, remember? I don’t know why you have to drag “information” into the discussion.