Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, July 01, 2021, 17:43 (1031 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I cannot comment about the bold. Living organism do not follow computer programs as those are lifeless.

dhw: After 13 years, you now wish to swap a computer programme for an algorithm. Fine. I find a 3.8-billion-year-old algorithm for the above list of instructions just as hard to swallow.

I never said DNA is a computer code. Algorithms are specific answers to specific issues.

Big brain evolution

DAVID: Your comment implies my dualist theory: just a few remaining cells can contain a whole consciousness. It can be received and squeezed into those remaining!!!

dhw: It implies no such thing. If cells themselves are the source of consciousness, then the remaining cells will take on the functions of processing information, communicating and decision-making which are the hallmarks of conscious intelligence (although you don’t believe it). I remain neutral on the subject.

As usual, wrong. Cells are not the source of consciousness, but the receivers. Smaller aerials can still receive large signals. Why a crust of brain works.

DAVID: (re Supernova): I agree outside the Milky Way doesn't affect us in any direct way.
And:
DAVID: (re Neutron star black hole merge): as dhw and I have agreed much of the happenings in the universe are at random, a result of initial design.

DAVID: […] In no way can you equate the mechanics of the universe with evolving life. A fine-tuned-for-life universe can have larger parts running on its own once the needs for life are satisfied.

dhw: I am not equating the two actions. I am saying that both actions may illustrate the same principle: that God sets things in motion, and then leaves them to do their own thing. A fine-tuned-for-life universe runs on its own; a finely designed living cell runs on its own.

You are equating the material universe actions with living actions. True, but I noted the truer issue is control over directions of evolution, not life after it evolved!!!

Ant raft movements
QUOTE: Alone, a fire ant is nothing spectacular. But lump them together, and the insects behave with what is called swarm intelligence; individuals work as a team, obeying simple rules to give rise to far more complex collective behavior. (David’s bold)

DAVID: […] The individual ant follows simple rules for himself to create the whole raft behaviour. […] No overall controlling mind, but swarm action based on programmed individual responses.

dhw: Stunning! Thank you. But as usual, you skip the origin of their behaviour, which can only have begun through intelligent experimentation. Ants communicate, and their ingenuity may be an exact mirror of the way our own intelligent cell communities cooperate in producing new ideas and implementing them. A successful strategy will be passed on.

Now ants have the ability to analyze, create and pass on concepts. Your God gave ants powerful brains. Individual ants have the same limited responses all researchers note.

The big bang
DAVID: The Big Bang created space-time reality. Its origin is as mysterious as God, Himself. We can not imagine the BB in any way as a start of what is now present. We cannot treat the BB as a natural event. […] I am left with God, the Creator.

No one can “imagine” the BB or God. If you can cope with the idea of an all-powerful conscious mind that has simply always been there, then why can’t you cope with the idea of an eternal unconscious universe of mindless matter and energy which one fine day produced some sort of explosion that gave rise to our universe, which could even itself be a tiny part of an infinite universe that stretches beyond our powers of observation? No, I’m not proposing that. I’m merely offering alternatives to your God and to the absurd theory that “nothing” can be the source of everything.

God is not nothing.

Heme

DAVID: Tell me how that happens by chance. There is no answer but a careful designer creating the process […]

dhw: I have no idea how much of the mechanism was in place right from the start, but as always, you have presented the strongest possible case for design.

And you refuse to accept the need for a designing mind, which some of us call God.