Let's study ID (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 27, 2021, 15:53 (1002 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Do you deny a first cause that for you includes mindless material somehow resulting in the human mind?

dhw: That is one of the alternatives that I find unsatisfactory, the other being the theory that conscious beings like ourselves must have a source, and therefore the source must be a conscious being without a source.

Do you believe in any first cause and do you accept a first cause must exist?

DAVID: That is my reasoned conclusion from reading science books!!!

dhw: I’m surprised that there are science books which make the above claims plus the rest of your anthropocentric theory of God's roundabout method of achieving his sole purpose. Or do you mean that you have read lots of science books and have come up with this theory all by yourself?

All by myself

Taken from: Specific organs protection

dhw: You’re right. I’m bewildered. Design, you say, requires the ability to foresee future needs. Your pet example of this would be your God anticipating that a bunch of pre-whales asleep on the land would one day need to live in the water, and so he popped in and changed their legs to flippers.

DAVID: Glad you made the admission. The point is God had to consider the proper anatomy to allow those changes, as well as consider how they would breathe in a new way, have sex in a new way, give birth underwater, and handle predators that would be new to them, as very partial examples of the many considerations a designer must think about in advance of actual production.

dhw: So now you have your God popping in every few thousand years to change legs to flippers, and reorganize breathing, sex, birth and defence mechanisms – all BEFORE the poor creatures had any problem with their breathing, sex, birth and enemies. And each pop was part of his goal to design humans who weren’t even there! May I suggest that when whales entered the water, all these changes came about in stages to improve the animals’ chances of survival and NOT as advance operations even before there were any problems?

I can't imagine a pre-whale landlubber floundering around in the water happily thinking to himself, "I'm going to be a whale". My God made each stage all at once at the start of each stage, fully prepared for a new style of life.

TOMATOES
QUOTE: "Tomatoes that are being eaten by insects use electrical signals to send an alert to the rest of the plant, similar to the way our nervous systems warn of damage.”

DAVID: Purpose is proposed and solved. How, really? But what mechanism? Darwinism is all magic. This was designed and required thought to do it.

dhw: The authors are simply describing what happens and why. What does this have to do with Darwin? You are welcome to add that you think this proves that God popped in and tinkered with tomatoes in order to help them survive such an attack (though you don’t think survival has anything to do with it), or he had to pop in because otherwise the insects he had designed would have stopped us from enjoying tomatoes with our bacon and egg. Offer any theory you like. I would suggest that tomato cells used their (perhaps God-given) intelligence to develop this means of survival. I have no idea how all this is supposed to prove that ID means your God foresaw future needs and therefore designed the defence strategy before tomatoes came under attack.

DAVID: You are still blind to the Darwinism magic solutions. In my view those tomatoes arrived with defense mechanisms.

dhw: What magic solutions? Did Darwin even know about these tomatoes? Do tell us the point of defense mechanisms if it is not to defend organisms against threats to their SURVIVAL? And tell us why your God found it necessary to design the insects to attack the tomatoes and to defend the tomatoes against them, when all he wanted to do was design humans and their lunch. Couldn’t he have found a better way to feed the insects than to threaten our salad through a shortage of tomatoes? May I suggest that only when organisms’ survival is threatened to do they design counter-measures?

How do the tomato plants learn to produce noxious chemicals? My point is still the Darwinist magical solutions as in the article, and please note I said nothing about Darwin, himself, who didn't know what he didn't know. My dislike is for his acolytes.