Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, August 12, 2021, 19:32 (989 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I don’t know why you keep inserting “instructions” – which at one time you called algorithms, which are instructions designed to solve particular problems (the exact opposite of an autonomous ability to solve problems). But since you now say that what you mean is your God gave cells the autonomous ability to come up with new solutions to new problems, we are indeed in agreement, and I shall record this for when we discuss the possible role played in evolution by cells’ autonomous ability to produce new solutions in response to new requirements.

We do not agree because you twist my explanations. The only reason the cells seem to act autonomously is because they can, based on the mechanisms God coded/designed into them. As a result they recognize foreign invaders and can produce killing antibodies, all automatically, no thought involved, just God's

dhw: I keep repeating that it is the QUEST for survival that leads to the changes in anatomy which ARE speciation, no matter how many exclamation marks you use.

DAVID: I'm delighted only you know how speciation occurs. When is your breakthrough book coming out?

dhw:You keep moaning that the role played by the quest for survival is pure Darwinism, so I really don’t think I am all alone.

You are in bed with the committed Darwinists, who connive to make it work.

Retinal design allows prediction of movement
dhw: I wonder how many even of your ID-ers would support your theory.

DAVID: Irreducible complexity (IC) is their confirming theory.

dhw: That “confirms” their theory that life forms must have been designed. Now please tell us if they reject the idea that different degrees of vision etc. developed gradually, and if they accept the idea that your God designed all major mutations before they were required.

IC means all at once!!!

Back to theodicy: fixing genome mistakes
DAVID: Bacteria are not corralled, but are everywhere by design.

dhw: How does that explain your well-intentioned God’s direct design of those which he knew would cause untold harm to other life forms?
[> DAVID: That is why we have God-given brains to solve those problems. In your statement I would use 'could' for you bolded 'would'.

dhw: Well, they could and did, and he knew they could. I really can’t see any good intentions behind the idea that your God designed bad bacteria (which caused untold damage to life forms long before humans were around), so that humans could come along and solve some of the problems while others continue to cause untold suffering.

Bacteria are doing good everywhere, remember?! Only in teh wrong places are they bad. I view the good as substantially outweighing the bad

Neil Thomas

DAVID: Funny that Thomas and I reach the same conclusion you would try to avoid. Your rigid mindset is showing. Darwin's modifications show his response to the backlash he experienced, chronicled at great length by Thomas.

dhw: Many of Darwin’s arguments were opposed because of religious prejudice. He has been vindicated by the fact that so many religious folk now accept his theory of common descent (as opposed to separate creation) and realize that it does NOT exclude God as the creator. Why do you call agnosticism a “rigid mindset”, when it allows for the possibility of God and of no God, whereas atheists and theists rigidly reject one or other of those possibilities?

Do you recognize how rigidly you oppose a God of purpose?

Smart animals
quote: "Over and over again, she and others are finding evidence not just for a relatively simple, ubiquitous sense of numerosity in animals, but also for a growing inventory of much more abstract and complex forms of numerical cognition."

DAVID: Simple counting is necessary, but these animals are nowhere near human math.

dhw: Of course not. But we should never underestimate the intelligence and sentience of our fellow animals.

You should not overestimate as a way of reducing our enormous difference.