Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, May 25, 2021, 08:07 (1276 days ago) @ David Turell

Fungi helped plants
DAVID: The issue you seem to struggle with is DNA is coded information which creates living organisms and instructs the underlying biochemical process of life. It allows for experiential actions and reactions.

dhw: I have no struggle at all with the fact that our DNA does all that you say it does. But vague references to “information” do not answer the question of how organisms cooperate in order to improve their chances of survival. That is why I am asking you whether you believe your God supplied detailed formulas for all cooperation and detailed solutions for all problems throughout life’s history. If he did not do so, what alternative means of cooperation, problem-solving and decision-making do you think he might possibly have provided?

DAVID: God's epigenetic mechanisms allow for simple adaptations that allow for cooperative solutions.

You will have to forgive me for my denseness, but I find the switch from “intelligent information” to “epigenetic mechanisms”, and from “instructs” to “allows for”, slightly bewildering when my first question could easily be answered by “yes” or “no”. Let me try again, but this time I’ll be more direct. Disregarding the autonomy of human free will, do you believe that your God either preprogrammed or dabbled all instances of cooperation and all solutions to all problems throughout life’s history? If not, do you believe that he gave organisms the autonomous ability to cooperate and solve problems? If it’s the latter, but you want to limit this ability to “simple adaptations”, do you then agree that this ability denotes a “simple” form of autonomous intelligence?

Deep sea extremophiles
QUOTE: "The deep sea is a part of our planet unlike any other. Accounting for over 95 percent of Earth’s living space, it is cold, dark, and under extreme pressure, yet an astounding variety of creatures abound.”

DAVID: See the photos. Amazing.

dhw: We agree! And once again I can only thank you for posting such articles.

DAVID: Thank you. Part of my role.

It is this that keeps our website going!

Some extremophiles use radioactivity
DAVID: Back to the same concept. Life must have a continuous energy supply to survive. Further this system may be the way life started.

I don’t think anyone would deny that life needs energy. And we are certainly back to the same concept: that these micro-organisms appear to have the wherewithal to survive by changing those parts of themselves that need to be changed in order to meet different requirements. This, I suggest, may have set the pattern for the whole of evolution, and I agree that it may be the way life started.

Milky Way has a twin
DAVID: This tells us a galaxy like ours exists and there must be others, and they could contain Earths. It doesn't disturb me if God is sponsoring life/humans in many places.

If God exists, I’d find it a bit strange that he would confine his interests to a single planet, let alone a single species plus food supply. One can’t help asking why else he would create the billions of galaxies. On the other hand, the more galaxies there are, the more Earths there will be, and the more Earths there are, the greater the chances of life eventually emerging in its simplest forms (see "extremophiles"). And the more Earths there are, the greater the chances of simple forms starting the process of cooperation which eventually leads to evolution as we know it. But don’t get me wrong: I am still stuck on my fence!