Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Thursday, August 05, 2021, 11:32 (996 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: New antibodies to new threats are made by following instructions that exist from birth.

dhw: Do you mean that your God planted instructions on how to create each individual new antibody for each new future threat? Or do you mean that he gave our cells the ABILITY to recognize each new threat and to respond to it by creating new antibodies de novo without him having to intervene?

DAVID: You've got it!!! The latter portion of your comment is exactly what God did!

And now at last it seems that you’ve got it too. Your God did NOT plant instructions for every new antibody, which can only mean that cells have the autonomous ability to process new information, make decisions and create new antibodies without any intervention from him. If cells have the autonomous ability to do so, then they have the autonomous ability to recognize changing conditions and to respond by creating changes within themselves – and that is what Shapiro regards as the process by which evolution works: cells are intelligent beings that do their own designing. I’m delighted that you’ve got it!!! CELLS HAVE THE AUTONOMOUS ABILITY TO CHANGE THEMSELVES IN RESPONSE TO NEW CONDITIONS, WITH NO INTERVENTION FROM YOUR GOD. Please don’t backtrack. If you do, I shall quote you.

Larvae use virus for immunity
DAVID: God obviously knew flippers were a requirement.

dhw: A requirement for what, if not for improving their chances of survival?

DAVID: Helping survival doesn't advance speciation.

dhw: So you agree that legs changing to flippers helped pre-whales to survive, but apparently legs changing to flippers do not advance speciation! The same argument, then, for every adaptation/innovation that “helped survival”. If speciation happens when parts of the body are changed, and if the changes help those organisms to survive, how can you possibly believe that “helping survival doesn’t advance speciation”?

DAVID: Interesting word game. God obviously makes flippers as part of a new species, built for survival. Survival of the fittest did not make a new species, God did..

It is you who are playing word games. A purpose doesn’t “make” anything! The purpose of the flippers was to improve the animal’s chances of survival. This and other such changes caused speciation. It is absurd to argue that the purpose of a change is not the reason for the change. Speciation happens because life forms change in the quest for survival, whether God makes the changes or the cells do it themselves.

Retinal design allows prediction of movement
dhw: We have no idea how long it would have taken the dog to develop its extraordinary sense of smell. But it is totally absurd to expect to find fossils of every single stage of dog-nose development. Now please answer my question – do you think your God stepped in to adjust the different degrees of vision, hearing and smell?

DAVID: Design means a complex plan is formed all at once, and cannot be stepwise.

You are tying yourself in knots. According to you, your God spent 3.8 billion years changing simple bacteria step by step into complex humans (not to mention all the other steps as he specially designed every other branch of life that had nothing to do with humans).

Balance of nature: importance of ecosystems
DAVID: when humans change the top predator by bringing in foreign animals, the ecosystem falls part. The giant bush of life is made of of many thousand such systems, which should not be disturbed.

You are so right. Humans are the most destructive of all animals, and we are currently in the process of destroying both our environment and ourselves.