Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Monday, May 03, 2021, 13:21 (1090 days ago) @ David Turell

We change ecosystems
DAVID: Your climate confusion leads you to think we humans are powerful enough to control it.

dhw: What “climate confusion”? Are you now telling us that the climate is not changing, or that any changes are not liable to cause huge damage to our ecosystems? If it’s true that the main cause is human activity, then of course we should be powerful enough to control it. The question then is whether certain powerful human institutions are willing to make the necessary sacrifices.

DAVID: Giving up fossil fuels will create economic chaos.

So will the collapse of our ecosystem, and you have not even mentioned the cost in human suffering that this will cause. A gradual but worldwide transition from fossil fuels to less damaging sources of energy will create a different form of economy. Such a process need not be chaotic if humans cooperate instead of thinking solely in terms of what they have in their bank accounts.

Tadpoles and the hypothalamus
dhw: I asked you if there was anything in the known history of life that contradicts my theory. “I disagree” plus reiteration of your own fixed belief is not an answer.

DAVID: We have no evidence how speciation occurs, only theories. The designs of living biochemistry tells me a designing mind must do it.

And you cannot/will not even contemplate the possibility that a designing mind might design a mechanism that enables life forms themselves to design their own adaptations and innovations.

DAVID: You simply dragged in your old tired cell intelligence theory, so I disagreed.

dhw: And so instead you dragged in your old tired theory that God designed every species. I have painstakingly pointed out the illogicality of your old tired theory. Now please point out any illogicality in the various theories referred to above, bearing in mind that in the past you have acknowledged that they are all logical.

DAVID: Your so-called logical theories all start with a highly humanized God who likes free-for-all evolution and needs to experiment. I have never found your intelligent cell theory logical.

The silly “humanized” argument has been deal with elsewhere. What is so illogical about a theory which suggests that what looks like intelligent behaviour may actually be the product of intelligence?

Brain and body sizes
DAVID: You want our sapiens brain to appear because of new natural requirements creating a new species.

dhw: I don’t “want” anything. I am searching for logical explanations. I find it perfectly feasible that both speciation in general and the human brain in particular could be the result of organisms responding to new requirements.

AVID: Or be newly designed to fit the new needs.

I thought you believed that speciation took place IN ANTICIPATION of new needs. Didn’t your God change legs into flippers before entry into the water, mess about with pelvises before descent from the trees, operate on brains before they came up with new ideas and requirements?

DAVID: So you accept material naturalism with no basis in fact, opposed to my approach as I use the facts of design complexity to propose a designing mind.

dhw: Another of your gigantic non sequiturs! I have never queried the facts of complexity, or your argument that this requires design! And if by “material naturalism” you mean atheism, you should know by now that I am an agnostic. The theory I have offered here to explain the evolution of species and of the human brain allows for God as the designer of the mechanism that has made evolution possible. But instead of your control freak who individually designs not only every life form, but every lifestyle and every natural wonder, even stepping in to give courses to weaverbirds on how to build their nests, I propose a God who has given life forms the wherewith all to do their own designing.

DAVID: I know that. We both have theories.

But why do you keep pretending that my theory makes me a “materialist” and does not allow for a designing mind?

A two-celled ancient fossil
QUOTE: Earlier discoveries have confirmed the existence of such ancient multicellular life in oceans, some dating back over two billion years; it now seems possible that more than one evolutionary pathway led to the first multicellular lifeforms." (DAVID’s Bold)

DAVID: it is certainly possible life went through this stage to reach full multicellularity. The bolded idea that more than one pathway was followed in evolution is just an example of convergence, a well-recognized event in evolution.

Yet again, thank you for a fascinating article. Doesn’t such “convergence” suggest to you that if your God exists, his starting point was to design cells that could do their own designing, to enable them to adjust to different conditions?