Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Saturday, May 29, 2021, 12:16 (1064 days ago) @ David Turell

Fungi helped plants
dhw: First you agree that the adaptations are made independently of God, then you have God giving instructions. So I’m asking what these consist of and when you think your God inserted them. Please don’t dodge!

DAVID: I haven't changed. God designed evolution and simple adaptive changes (epigenetics) allow organisms to independently make small changes by following God's instructions.

I am not asking you to change. I am asking you what these instructions might consist of, bearing in mind that the organisms act independently of your God, and when he would have issued them.

Ant raids
DAVID: It works because individual ants are programmed to do the same thing over and over.

dhw: Except that they don’t: “There are several decisions the colony must make in the course of the raid.” Simple alternatives: did your God plant each decision in his 3.8-billion-year-old programme for all species and their decisions? Or does he watch each raid and tell each ant what to do? Or did he give ants the intelligence with which to make their own decisions?

DAVID: Colony decisions cause individual ants to do their simple response, as many studies have shown. You are equating whole colonies reactions it what the single ant does. God is not in action here.

The colony consists of communicating ants! If God is not in action, then the decisions are taken by the ants themselves. As with human collectives, there will be some ants directing others. The point is that the decision-making ants must have autonomous intelligence.

Neutron stars
dhw: Why such a vast universe with such “weird objects” if his only purpose was to create humans plus food supply?

DAVID: It is your sole mystery. For an answer please refer to yesterday's entry.

dhw: That was your attempt to dodge the origin of evil by switching to bad design. But if you are confident that one day science will find a good reason for your God’s creation of all these weird objects, let’s leave it at that. Some of us prefer to wait for an explanation before we commit ourselves to judgement. “Why do humans guess at God’s designs before they have the full story?” (D. Turell)

DAVID: Thank you.

Nothing to thank me for. You guess that all the weird objects, just like all the bad bacteria and viruses, have some kind of beneficial purpose. Why guess before you have the full story?

Clear evidence of common descent
"This mechanism likely has been conserved since the last common ancestor of all eukaryotes." (David’s bold)

DAVID: That evolution is a continuum from start to now is clearly shown by studies of the evolution of the genome controls. God, as designer, makes it easy for Himself in creating common descent.

dhw: I agree that evolution is a continuum in the form of a bush that has constantly expanded into thousands and thousands of branches (different life forms), though these are not connected to one another.

DAVID: The past does show the connections. You are slicing up evolution into segments again.

Then you force me to go back to your theory of evolution, which argues that all life forms have been specially designed as “part of the goal of evolving [= designing] humans” and their food supply. There is no connection between 99% of the branches of life’s bush and humans. The connection is between all life forms and the bacteria from which they sprouted in their different directions. The branches are not connected with one another!

dhw: (We have agreed not to discuss the “connection” aspect of your theory of evolution.) However, your idea of “common descent” is “the initial and consistent use of DNA in all initial forms from DNA to us. My whole point is God creating species de novo” (under “conserved gene order”, quoted by me on 20 May). The Cambrian is your prime example. This is the direct opposite of what we normally understand by “common descent”, which is that all life forms (except the first) are directly descended from previous life forms. Just clarifying!

DAVID: Come on. God's designs are not discontinuous. Slicing again. New is built upon old. You are correct about the Cambrian but consider also start of life. Both seem pure invention. But the Cambrian must have used the same DNA genome codes while origin of life invented the codes.

The slicing is done by you, because over and over again you emphasize the GAPS, and according to you, your God designs every species DE NOVO! Yes, he uses the same DNA codes, but there is no continuity. A carpenter may use the same wood to create a stool, a garden shed and a toothpick, but that does not mean all of them were designed as part of his goal to design a chalet in the Swiss Alps. “De novo” automatically means discontinuity! “Common descent” means that every form of life has directly descended from a preceding form of life. THAT is continuity. But of course you have every right to your Creationism. It only becomes a problem when you insist that all life forms were designed de novo for the sake of one life form, with which 99% of them had no connection.