Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, May 08, 2021, 16:53 (1085 days ago) @ dhw

BATS
DAVID: Your problem is there are no predecessors.
dhw: That is why I asked if you expected to find fossils of every single stage of every single life form over the last 3.8 billion years. Why do you think my bat theory is impossible?

You can hope to fill the gap IF there is one. With time the Cambrian gap only growsl

Biological complexity:
dhw: [..] If cells were free to fail, this suggests they were also free to succeed.

DAVID: I'm discussing molecular failure, and you jump to cell failure. Why?

d hw: Because molecules are part of the cell, and if molecules fail, cells may fail, and this may cause the diseases you say your God tried to prevent with backups which also fail. Why have you ignored my bolded comment?

Of course cells are free to succeed. Your point?

Seals
DAVID: […] God designs all advances in evolution. The article infers random Darwinian mutations to make the new aquatic species.

dhw: Your usual statement of belief in the guise of fact. Please pinpoint any passage in the article that infers random mutations.

Here: "“This is fundamental knowledge that helps us to understand how the huge diversity of life we see around us first evolved on our planet.” 'Helps understand' is not true. There had to be new information in new mutations. All the article presents is description of change. Pure Darwinist hope.

The obstetric dilemma
DAVID: […] the mother's pelvis bony outlet had to enlarge at the same time a bigger brained fetus appeared. And this also involves the Dad's DNA input […] Our evolution had to be guided by a designing mind, God, as our bigger brain kept evolving bigger and bigger. […]

dhw: Even now, birth is a painful process. As always, I find it hard to believe that your God dabbled simultaneously with brains, pelvises and sperms,...I find it more likely that as the brain grew, the pelvic cells tried to adapt to accommodate the new size.

The pelvic cells knew the independent baby skull size had grown. Really? Whew.

Big Bang theory survives
DAVID: The Big Bang still survives over all others

dhw: We are still left with the question of what preceded the Big Bang. If you believe there was nothing before it, you can say goodbye to your God theory, and you will have to believe that something can come out of nothing, which requires a mighty leap of faith.

Preceded it? God. Not nothing. Big Bang is an instant creation of our universe.

Plants sense what’s happening

DAVID: Using terms that apply to humans confuses the issue as usual. Plants are sentient but not conscious in our sense of the word.

dhw: There is only confusion if you try to equate plant intelligence with human consciousness (i.e. self-awareness). If plants are sentient. can work out solutions and communicate with other plants, I’d say that = a form of intelligence.

Or simply following God's intelligent instructions.

Huge new function
DAVID: In the biochemistry of life God designed a system that is easily altered. Just change a proteins fold and results in a different function appear.

dhw: I like the “huge” in your heading. It fits in well with my proposal that cells are capable of autonomously making major changes to themselves using a perhaps God-given mechanism for self-modification.

Why are your 'cells' so capable? I am pointing out a tiny protein alteration causes huge differences in function. Why is that possible? Magical? No, the biochemical system from God is so amazing it cannot be viewed as chance. That tiny change presented a huge amount of new informational instructions of how to change a body form that can acted upon by the bodies cells to create the morphological change. How that really happens is a total black box to us and its significance is lost on you for its design significance. There is no 'perhaps'. A designing mind is required. What it is called/labelled doesn't matter. That is my simple approach.