Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Friday, July 09, 2021, 15:56 (1231 days ago) @ dhw

Ant raft movements
DAVID: […] Bridges and rafts are dependent on individual specific limited actions. That creates the swarm activities as interpreted by humans watching.

dhw: As in any team, individuals perform their own role in a communal activity. No one would deny this! The question is how the strategy first came about! I propose that the individuals pooled their intelligences (= “swarm intelligence”) to work it out, and once they had found the solution, the strategy was passed on to subsequent generations. I find this more convincing than your divine 3.8-billion-year-old programme for ant speciation followed by ant-rafting, or your God giving courses for ants on the art of bridge-building. Do you have any other theories to explain the origin of such strategies?

The 'strategies' are human interpretations resulting from the limited individual specified actions. I look at it from the ant viewpoint. This discussion started with swarming bacteria and birds. No purpose just movement. Ant swarms are the same. Individual ants float. Do you think they know about rafts? I doubt it. I view ant bridges as human interpretations

Bacterial motors 1

DAVID: And thinking humans can recognize it was designed.

dhw: Thinking humans can theorize that a God preprogrammed or dabbled the machine, motorless bacteria underwent random mutations, or intelligent motorless bacteria came up with a good idea. No proof available for any of these theories, so there is no point in your dismissing those that differ from yours just because there isn’t a smidgen of proof.

Non-answer. Looks designed, doesn't it? Keeps you agnostic.

Phase precession

dhw: That is indeed how evolution works. […] For some reason, you think EVERY advance (not just the human brain) from bacteria to every life form plus lunch plus strategy plus natural wonder that ever existed required a 3.8-billion-year-old programme or, alternatively, a personal dabble by your God. A simpler theistic explanation would be that your God endowed cells [...] with the intelligence to do their own designing. I think we’ve had this discussion before

DAVID: You just raised it again. I'm just pointing out how evolution must work, which you reject when you tell me my theory is irrational.

dhw: I have just agreed with your statement that “early working designs appear later in more advanced designs in more advanced forms”. Your irrational theory is that every single design and advancement was specially created as part of your God’s one and only goal to design humans (plus lunch), although 99% of them had no connection with humans (plus lunch).

You have again described how God evolved us and then objected to his process of cretion.

Otters
QUOTE: "It’s not yet clear if otters inherit this trait or develop it with exposure to cold water.” (DAVID’s bold)

DAVID: How did otters develop this? Hypothermia kills quickly. Two possibilities: otters developed in warm seas and changed/adapted as seas cooled. Or God designed them that way.

dhw: A theist might suggest that God designed the intelligent cells that designed the adaptation.

Yes, the possibility of gradual epigenetic adaptation was presented by me above.