Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Friday, August 13, 2021, 18:09 (988 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: 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: The twisting is entirely yours....The autonomous ABILITY to recognize threats, process information, make decisions and produce new ideas to meet new requirements, can be summed up in one word: intelligence.

Same 50/50 appearance discussion is back. It is all automatic molecular reactions. Organic molecules have thousands of amino acids with regions of negative and positive electrical charges, hydrophilic and hydrophobic regions, and these electrophysical characteristics influence all the proper foldings, and all orchestrated by giant enzymes. A cell is a churning factory of these reactions, many of which I have shown singly in research design articles of single processes. Try and imagine thousands of these reactions going on in split-seconds constantly in each cell. This is the biochemical view of emergent life. This is what we are usually superficially discussing. At these micro-second speeds it must be automatic or the cell crashes. We have discussed this superficially in theodicy, because of the required speed God knew in advance mistakes would happen and put in editing mechanisms.

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

dhw: You simply refuse to acknowledge the logical conclusion that if changes take place in order to improve chances of survival, and those changes result in speciation, then speciation (evolution) is a direct result of the quest for survival.

Pure old Darwinism, undiluted. Survival is simply the onboard desire to stay alive. You don't know how speciation happens. My choice is God does it by design.

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.

DAVID: IC means all at once!!!

dhw: So once more: do your ID-ers believe that different degrees of vision etc. were all created at once? And do they believe that your God designed all major mutations before they were required?

In my reading of ID, absolutely.

Back to theodicy: fixing genome mistakes

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

dhw: The proportion of good to bad does not explain why your God specially designed the bad, and that is the problem of theodicy.

Once again, the theodicy theory I follow is so-called (by humans) bad bacteria are simply useful bacteria in the wrong place. Try having your usual E. coli in your colon enter your peritoneum. all hell breaks loose.

Neil Thomas

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

dhw: I certainly don’t. I have told you over and over again that all my versions of God are just as purposeful as yours – but I do not accept your rigid theory that your God’s one and only purpose was to design humans plus food, and therefore he designed countless life forms and foods that had no connection with his one and only purpose. And once more, why do you consider open-minded agnosticism to be more rigid than fixed belief in God or no God?

You have every right to be doubtful and I am totally comfortable in my beliefs.

Smart animals
dhw: But we should never underestimate the intelligence and sentience of our fellow animals.

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

dhw: I doubt if anyone on this planet would deny the enormous difference. But that should not blind us to the intelligence and sentience of our fellow animals.

Their tiny abilities are recognized. A billion chimps at typewriters will not produce one of your plays or even one sentence.