Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Monday, May 03, 2021, 18:11 (1298 days ago) @ dhw

We change ecosystems

DAVID: Giving up fossil fuels will create economic chaos.

dhw: 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.

Nations are competitors. You exhibit wishful thinking.

Brain and body sizes

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.

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

That gives up control. Not my 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.

dhw: 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?

Thank you. Happy to present them. God's pre-planning designs allows using the same design again and again