Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, July 31, 2021, 15:32 (1209 days ago) @ dhw

Death is built in

DAVID: We don't know that adaptations for survival drive evolution!!!!! Pure Darwinist unproven theory that survival of the fittest drives evolution.

dhw: Even you have accepted that your God designed adaptations, innovations, strategies, lifestyles etc. in order to improve organisms’ chances of survival. Since you claim to believe in common descent (except when you don’t), how then can you possibly argue that the adaptations and innovations which your God preprogrammes or dabbles and which lead to speciation (one life form changing into another) have no connection with the quest for survival? You don’t need to use the word “drive”. The purpose of the changes is survival, and the mechanism that implements the changes may be your God, and may be cellular intelligence (perhaps God-given). You and I have rejected Darwin’s random mutations.

This is a non-answer. I also know life has survival mechanisms. I reject 'survival of the fittest' drives/advances evolution. How do you see evolution advanced?

Immunity system complexity

DAVID: Exactly. God's immunity instructions allow all of us to learn how to fight new infections from birth!!! mRNA covid vaccine shows it.

WHAT instructions? Here is my theistic proposal: God has given cells the ABILITY to solve problems. God has NOT given cells the SOLUTIONS to all the problems. Do you agree?

Word play. The instructions tell the cells how to recognize new invaders and then manufacture appropriate antibodies to fit onto the invading molecules to inactivate them. Of course God gave them this ability.

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.

dhw: 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!

DAVID: We are discussing God's implanted instructions cells do not self-invent in order to live extremely. You won't accept them.

dhw: Same as above. God has given cells the ability to solve problems. God has NOT given cells the solutions to all the problems. Do you agree?

Of course, unless you backtrack as before. God gives the cells the ability to have the proper responses.

Caterpillar memory
DAVID: Wow!!! Memories carried to the butterfly form in the discs of genome. That wasn't designed by chance. Chance could not have logically developed metamorphosis. Only a designer.

dhw: I echo your wow, but for the life of me I cannot see why your God, whose only purpose was to design humans and their food, would have preprogrammed or personally dabbled this extraordinary – but obviously efficient – process of metamorphosis. It looks to me like living proof that all forms of life find their own special ways of surviving in a great-free-for-all possibly set in motion by a designer who gave them the means to do their own designing.

At least you note the need for design from teh beginning.

Larvae use virus for immunity
QUOTE: "Putting our research together created this very interesting story about the biological arms race occurring on a very large scale between multiple pathogens, wasps, and hosts, which we now know are also fighting back,” Theilmann says.

dhw: Another wonderful example of the gigantic free-for-all, as all life forms struggle to find their own ways of survival. It’s half the story of evolution – the other half being cooperation for exactly the same purpose of survival. And yet some people can’t see the connection between evolution and the quest for survival.

Survival is not the way speciation happens. Survival is simply live and let live. That is the true 'survival of the fittest' meaning.