Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Monday, July 19, 2021, 08:29 (1013 days ago) @ David Turell

Humans correcting errors
DAVID: That is why I consider His dabbles as necessary. The human brain didn't just appear. I view it as a God design.

dhw: According to you, there are no life forms, econiches, natural wonders etc. that “just appeared” – you view them all as God’s designs. Have you now discarded the 3.8-billion-year-old programme altogether? bbbThis would suggest that your God was constantly at work designing and directing absolutely everything bit by bit from the first cells to trilobites, dinosaurs, mosquitoes, the duckbilled platypus, ant bridges and the weaverbird’s nest – and all as “part of the goal of evolving [= designing] humans” and their lunch. You don’t find this a little far-fetched?

DAVID: My view of God's powers is not far-fetched. I firmly accept that God designs the complexity of living biochemistry.

The above does not dispute the reasonableness of your belief that your God designed the complexity of living biochemistry. It challenges the reasonableness of believing that he popped in zillions of times to individually design every new life form etc., as bolded above. Why do you insist on answering a question by changing its terms?

Detergent defenses

dhw:. My proposal is that whenever a new threat appears, the cells work out a defence. This may take time – it is a sequence: problem first, solution second. The two processes only exist at once after the solution has been designed.

DAVID: Again a non-answer which is not deliberate. It shows me you do not understand the problem. The bacteria making the new detergent will kill itself without a built-in protective mechanism. It must invent both simultaneously to be a successful advance. That must require new information developed in its DNA (think Shapiro) for both new processes. No time for trial and error over survival steps, per Darwin. Design, all at once, is the only fit, logically.

You may be right about this particular problem. The article mentioned the ability of the APOL3 to “distinguish between bacterial membranes and host membranes” and admired the elegant way evolution had found to “control this powerful tool”. This seemed to me to illustrate my general observation that cells are directed by their own intelligence, and problems always precede solutions. But I’m in no position to discuss the precise details of this one individual process.

Immunity system complexity
dhw: Cells having the ability to mutate (change themselves) and to ”perfect” their response to different demands is of course crucial to the theory of evolution by way of cellular intelligence. It is clear from this process that the solution to the problem is NOT already there: it is the mechanism for solving the problem that is there.

DAVID: Exactly, the cells contain information/instructions from God in their DNA's as to how to do it.

dhw:...Why do you totally reject the simplest explanation: that your God (theistic version) gave all organisms, from single cells to the most complex cell communities, the ability (i.e. intelligence) to solve problems as and when they arose without his having to do all the work himself?

DAVID: I've just shown you immune cells are programmed to protect us without God stepping in each time we get sick. Many parts of our bodies work just that way.

The cells contain information/instructions/a programme from God enabling cells to solve
problems without your God stepping in. But each new problem is different. The cells
must make new adjustments. The information/instructions/programme would have to
be colossal to cover every problem for the rest of time. And so once more: Why do you
think it is impossible for your God to have given cells the intelligence to work out each
solution as each new problem arose?

New life evolves earth’s climate
QUOTE: However, this climate instability, in turn, helps to accelerate evolution." (David’s bold)

DAVID: note the bold. Of course changing climate changes the course of evolution. This brings me back to the proposal I've presented. God works to creates our reality by evolving each part, the universe from the Big Bang, the Earth from its origin and life from its.[som From this article we see Earth-Life-Climate co-evolvement.

dhw: I don’t think even the most ardent atheist would disagree that evolution, Earth, life and climate are inextricably linked.

DAVID: My main point you missed, or I poorly referred to it, is: God prefers to create by evolution of all aspects of reality. Explains why He evolved us. Only the BB is direct creation, as an initiation must be.

Again, no one would deny that the earth itself has evolved. One might ask why an all-powerful God who is in total control couldn’t come up straight away with conditions that were needed for his one and only goal – humans and their lunch – but that will only lead us round in the same circles: we mustn’t query the logic of your theories.