Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Friday, August 06, 2021, 21:40 (1203 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: 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.

DAVID: No. God gave the cells the ability to recognize invading foreign proteins, and add to them a poisoning addition to kill them. The cells are fully programmed to do this.

dhw: A programme = planted instructions. The ability to recognize each new threat and to respond by creating new antibodies de novo without any intervention from God does not mean following God’s instructions. I guessed you would backtrack. But substituting “programme” for instructions will not change your acknowledgement that cells have the autonomous ability (no intervention from God) to recognize and respond, creating NEW antibodies.

All you have to make it correct above is agree that the cells abilities ere programmed by God.

DAVID: 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..

dhw: 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.

DAVID: The bold is your usual scurry back to pure unproven Darwinism. Living creatures like living and try to survive. That is all the quest for survival can tell us about evolution.

dhw: Their efforts to survive lead to the adaptations and innovations that result in speciation. Speciation IS evolution.

Pure unadulterated Darwinism again. Modifications by existing organisms leading to speciation is pure unproven theory.

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.

dhw: 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).

DAVID: Dragging in the wrong response, as usual. Please discuss the meaning of design for the future, the point of my comment.

dhw: According to you, your God either preprogrammed or dabbled every step in the evolution of all species. How does this come to mean “a complex plan cannot be stepwise”? The point of your original comment was that if retinal design “required stepwise development over massive amounts of time, hunting animals would not have survived to evolve the process”. Hence my reply at the top of this entry on retinal design, and my now bolded question concerning degrees of vision etc. Do please answer it.

Your bold asks how God did the designs, and I have constantly instructed you in understanding how designers look at future uses and needs and do complete designs to fit those requirements. Not Darwinism 'bit by bit' but the opposite approach of all at once.