Let's study ID: giraffe plumbing: cognition (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, November 01, 2021, 10:39 (1116 days ago) @ David Turell

Immunity system complexity
DAVID: I agree we should discuss the issue you love that cells are innately intelligent. Everything, including McClinton's view is simply opinion, never proof.

You are dodging the two comments I was responding to: McClintock does have modern followers, and the websites I pointed out to you did support her theory. You don’t need to tell us that theories are theories and not proven facts.

Common design
dhw: Of course every life form is based on biochemical processes, but you can only view evolution by the changing forms, and it is these that result in speciation. You say your God only wanted to design our species plus food, and yet for reasons unknown he also individually designed all the other life forms, most of which had no connection with us. And he also designed new forms without precursors, from which we (plus lots of other non-human forms) are descended, but we are descended from bacteria. But you can't see the contradictions.

DAVID: So-called contradictions in bold are your inventions. Humans as an endpoint was God's desire, a vastly different way to look at it.

dhw: You claim that humans plus food were his only goal. If you have changed your mind, then please tell us his other goals.

DAVID: He chose stepwise design from simple to complex as His method of creation. This filled the needed purpose of food/energy supply for the whole resultant bush to use.

If he exists, then yes, he chose evolution for every life form, including humans. But if humans were his only goal, why did he specially design all the life forms and foods that had no connection with humans? This is the question you keep dodging.

DAVID: The bold implies (for the zillionth time) why not direct creation of only his final desired humans. That didn't happen for God's reasons. I don't know his reasons.

And that is the whole problem. You claim that your theory is logical, but you can’t explain it. Your theory is opinion, not fact. And if it doesn’t make sense to you, maybe it is wrong.

dhw: […] once more, please explain why you emphasize our descent from life forms with no precursors if you think that biochemical processes are the only factor to be considered in explaining the history of evolution.

DAVID: Evolution has the Cambrian gap in form. It means a giant step in form which negates Darwin tiny steps by chance, and in a major way supports a design theory.

That is a reasonable argument, though one might explain the gaps as being due to a lack of fossils. However, the problem we were dealing with was your insistence that we humans are descended from bacteria, but we are not descended from bacteria because we are descended from Cambrian life forms which had no precursors. Please explain this apparent contradiction.

DAVID: I view all responses to all changes as automatic, but agree not absolutely proven as yet.

dhw: I know your views. Your “not absolutely proven as yet” is on the same level of blinkered faith as Dawkins’ hope: “If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and to embrace it within the natural.” And the two of you call yourselves scientists.

DAVID How do you think about scientific discoveries? Are they additive? If so, we scientists can expect further understanding as Dawkins writes, even as I disagree with his opinions. Just as think cogitating cell brains will not be found.

Of course scientific discoveries are additive. But if there is no scientific consensus on a theory, it is unscientific to draw definitive conclusions while hoping for/anticipating future evidence, and to reject alternative explanations as you and Dawkins do.

DAVID: this is how science refines its theories, and you know it. Guth invented the theory of early inflation because it fits the facts known at the time. Research has supported it.

Why are you raising Guth again? You accepted his statement that time did not exist before the Big Bang, and then you finally agreed that both you and he were wrong because nobody could possibly know what happened before the Big Bang (if that happened). End of story.

DAVID: Time to retract this quote of yours, caused by your anti-Dawkins feelings. [See quote above]. As a non-scientist are you out of your depth?

The two of you have drawn directly opposite conclusions from the information available to us at this time, and neither of you can see that your faith in your opinions is just that – faith and not science. I don’t need to be a scientist to distinguish blinkered opinion from scientific fact!

Dopamine
QUOTE: Each vital molecule has to be found to make life work. So the odds for life on a finding basis for one bacteria is 2x10^100,000,000,000!!! (quote in my science vs religion book, page 77). Only a finding designer fits.

I have always agreed that the complexity of life is one of the strongest arguments for a designer. Don’t you wish Dawkins was open-minded enough to agree?