Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Friday, June 04, 2021, 10:43 (1266 days ago) @ David Turell

Fungi helped plants

DAVID (29th May): God designed epigenetic mechanism into organisms. The organisms then use them independently as minor adaptations are required by changes.

DAVID: (2nd June): You know I believe the plants automatically followed instructions, and I know and do not accept your view.

dhw: So let’s start again: please tell us which part of the adaptation process takes place independently of your God.

DAVID: God supplies the simple adaptation mechanisms and the organism itself decides to use when stimulated by a change.

Thank you. We are back where we started: adaptation entails processing the information coming from outside, communication between the cell communities, and then taking the decision on how the existing mechanism is to be used. All of these phases require some form of intelligence, and since the use of the existing mechanism takes place independently of your God, it can therefore only be guided by the intelligence of the cells themselves.

Neutron stars
dhw: […] I have come up with various theistic alternatives to your illogical theory [of evolution] and your non-theory [of theodicy], and one of them is that your God gave cells the intelligence to work out their own methods of survival. Your only objection to this is that it creates a different “humanized” image of God from the “humanized” image you yourself have of him. (…)

DAVID: Your same explanation. Essentially you view your God as not being in full control as I see He is. Not logical positions, but each of us views God differently.

“Not being in full control” sounds like a criticism of your God, whereas this particular theory has him CHOOSING not to be in control, precisely as you believe he CHOSE not to control human behaviour, by giving us free will.

DAVID: Your calling my theories illogical, while I point out to you your theories are logical based on the personality of your God shows you ignore my personalization of God fits my theories.

Your personalization of God offers no explanation at all for theodicy, and continues to gloss over the illogical aspects of your theory of evolution: if your purposeful God’s one and only purpose was to design humans and their food supply, why did he individually (de novo) design millions of life forms plus food supplies that had no connection with humans? We had agreed to drop this subject, since you have no explanation, but back you come with your claim that it is logical!

DAVID: I don't ignore your approach, so why do you ignore mine?

I have spent months (possibly even years) trying to get you to explain the logic behind your approach. Your basic technique has always been to dodge the issue, except when you agree that you have no idea why he would use such a method to achieve such a purpose.

Clear evidence of common descent
dhw: De novo speciation means creating species that have no antecedent. How does that come to mean “continuity” and “common descent”?

DAVID: God designs evolutionary advances. God's control is a part of my view of the continuity.

dhw: Evolutionary continuity would be one species developing directly from another. De novo creation of species is the opposite of continuity.

DAVID: Which makes a designer God necessary. You make my point.

So according to you, evolution is a continuous process, and your point is that God is necessary because evolution is not a continuous process – species are created de novo. To recap: I propose that evolution is continuous in the sense that all species evolve from existing species. However, it is NOT one single continuous process from bacteria to humans, but thousands and thousands of continuous processes as the bush of life expands into branches that have no connection with one another. The line from bacteria to humans is just one of these countless branches.

David’s theory of evolution
dhw: What I object to is your blanket assumption that every single innovation and every single solution to every single problem of survival throughout the history of evolution was planned or dabbled in advance (thanks to your God’s “foresight”), even to the extent that whales only entered the water after your God had turned their legs into flippers [etc.]

DAVID: Our evolution discussion must include God as I consider Him the designer of evolution.

All our discussions include God. I’m an agnostic, not an atheist. But that does not mean all our discussions must end in agreement that God planned or dabbled every innovation and solution in advance, e.g. by turning legs into flippers before pre-whales entered the water.

Error Correction
QUOTES: “The same process by which those proof-correcting proteins can cut and paste DNA is precisely what enables genes to be influenced by the organism and its environment.”

"Living systems are organised at many nesting levels, from molecules to cells to organs and the whole organism. Each level influences the processes occurring at molecular levels.”

This is what I mean when I refer to an organism as being a community of cell communities which communicate with one another and interact as they respond to the environment.