Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Friday, July 30, 2021, 14:26 (1210 days ago) @ David Turell

Death is built in
DAVID: Makes my survival view quite clear.

Absolutely no connection with your survival view, which is that although all the adaptations and innovations and strategies and lifestyles are designed to enable organisms to survive, all the adaptations etc. that result in the evolution of species have nothing to do with survival.

DAVID: Death is built in for all life, although longevity varies. Of course all organisms have protective measures. It seems to me very short life spans would not allow for adaptive mechanism to have a role and then perhaps reduce the chances for evolution designs to appear from God. He may need a specific time table.

Of course death is “built in” – no materials survive forever in the same form! I have no idea why you think your God needs organisms to have a long life span, since according to you he pops in and does a dabble any time he wants. How long, then, do you reckon he needed to operate on pre-whale legs before those poor creatures finally entered the water?

Immunity system complexity
QUOTE: “Scientists have long suspected that even cells that are not traditionally involved in the immune response have the rudimentary ability to remember prior results and learn from experience."

dhw:: Yet more evidence of cellular intelligence. It may be rudimentary by comparison with our own, but is efficient enough to do the jobs for which it is required.

DAVID: Yes, from information God implanted in them.

dhw: If they remember prior results,learn from experience, and use what they have remembered and learned, what information has your God “implanted” in them?

DAVID: How to do the exactly what the bold asks. They learn from experience and respond appropriately by God's instructions.

WHAT instructions? What would be the point of them remembering and learning and using what they remember and have learned if God is going to come along anyway and tell them what to do? If he has provided them with the ABILITY to respond, then they will not need to be told what to do.

Earliest pre-Cambrian animals
QUOTE: "If sponges existed 890 million years ago, then the origin of animals must have occurred much earlier than previous fossils have suggested.”

DAVID: Very simple early animals had to have a start in our past. Doesn't fill the Cambrian gap.

dhw: I'm glad you accept that simple animals must have existed, even though no fossils have yet been found. Please note: the cell communities have just been given an extra 300 million years to design the new complexities.

DAVID: The fossils are what I presented! The earliest animals. The time was always there.

Yes indeed. You accept that there were animals which preceded the Cambrians, even though no fossils have been found.

Horseshoe crab
QUOTE: Our new fossil demonstrates arthropod brains can be preserved in an entirely different way. The specimen of the horseshoe crab, Euproops danae, comes from the world-famous Mazon Creek deposit of Illinois, in the US. Fossils from this deposit are preserved within concretions made of an iron carbonate mineral called siderite.
"Uncovering these exceptional specimens gives palaeontologists a rare glimpse into the deep past, enhancing our understanding of the biology and evolution of long-extinct animals. It seems Charles Darwin need not have been so pessimistic about the fossil record after all."

DAVID: see the pictures of comparison. Stasis, not an advance, can happen also. Modern fossil analysis techniques are far in advanced of what Darwin thought could be.

That is what he thought might happen, and indeed each miraculous new discovery – made in different parts of the world - confirms the continuity of evolution. This, of course, should not be taken to mean that evolution was a continuous line from bacteria to humans - unless you think humans are direct descendants of horseshoe crabs as well as brontosauruses.

New extremophiles
DAVID: Organisms can live anywhere they wish. Life was designed to appear and survive from the beginning. Only by design.

dhw: If they can live anywhere they wish, doesn’t that suggest to you a free-for-all? And doesn’t it suggest that, if your God exists, he actually designed cells in such a way that they could live and survive by autonomously adapting to whatever conditions they encountered and by solving whatever problems came their way? Or do you believe that each of them follows instructions/is given a divine course on how to extract energy from their own special surroundings, and on how to counter every other threat to their survival?

DAVID: God initially designed life to be as tough as these examples. Your bold is exactly right and then you backtrack. Of course I believe God gave them instructions on extracting energy in many ways.

Where is the backtrack? I have proposed (the bold) that your God, if he exists, designed cells to live and survive autonomously, you say that is exactly right, and then YOU backtrack by saying he gave them instructions on how to live and survive!