More "miscellany" (General)

by dhw, Friday, December 10, 2021, 11:32 (839 days ago) @ David Turell

Reality: God is a mathematician
dhw: If you believe your God probably/possibly has thought patterns etc. similar to ours, why is it wrong to provide a logical explanation of life’s history which includes thought patterns similar to ours?

DAVID: You chose a very humanized God. I don't accept the God of your imagination.

So your all-powerful, well-intentioned control freak who can’t correct all the errors in the system he designed, enjoys creation and watches his creations with interest, is only human, whereas my laissez-faire God who enjoys creation and watches his creations with interest is very human, and the fact that your explanation of life’s history is incomprehensible to you (I must go and ask God to explain it), while mine makes perfect sense to you, is irrelevant.

Monarchs use toxic milkweed
DAVID: See entry on vampire bees today

QUOTE: In the end, Maccaro says, it’s hard to know which evolved first — the gut bacteria or the bees’ ability to eat meat. But the bees probably first turned to meat because there was so much competition for nectar for food, she suspects."

DAVID: The explanation is easy and dhw will love it.

Yes, I do. Organisms (which are all cell communities) clearly adapt themselves to or exploit changing conditions. If they don’t, they die. Hence the changes that lead to survival, and also to innovation, which in turn leads to speciation.

Spider webs
QUOTE: “The Goulds postulate that spiders have a form of mapping ability that enables them to implement general design principles in a wide variety of circumstances. This is demonstrated, for instance, by spiders successfully making repairs to damaged webs. (DAVID’s bold)

Yet again, we have organisms with an ability. Not a 3.8-billion-year programme or algorithm. But back you go to your “large organisms chauvinism”:

DAVID: these webs are of magical designs, not invented by tiny spider brains appearing through natural evolutionary processes. Only a design algorithm fits.

Size is irrelevant! Tiny computers (artificial intelligence) can contain masses of information. According to you, natural brains (producing natural intelligence) have the ability to interpret a very limited quantity of information, and yet are too tiny to use that information in order to spin a web, build a nest, or find the plants off which they feed. Once more, what is the use of an ability if you are incapable of using it?

Heliosphere protection
DAVID: So you don't understand it either! Wait for our research!

dhw: No, I don’t understand it, and nor do you. The fact that neither of us understands it should alert you to the possibility that it might be wrong, and that one of the alternatives that you do understand might even be right. If we wait for the research, there is no point in discussing any of the unsolved mysteries of life!

DAVID: But I accept what God did and don't clam it is illogical. I'm willing to wait for research explanations which continue to arrive.

You claim that your interpretation of what God did and why he did it is logical, but you can’t explain it!

Ecosystem importance
DAVID: Each system was useful in its time.

But most were irrelevant to current time (i.e. to humans)

DAVID: Evolution, by definition is a continuum of one stage leading to another. You want it chopped up into discontinuous parts.

But it is not a continuum of all stages of all species leading only to humans plus food! See “ant algorithm”.

Upright posture
dhw: Even an individual human in his own lifetime can make minor changes to his/her body by “continuous attempts” – what would be the purpose of training if it were otherwise? Why is it impossible that the cell communities of which all bodies consist might with “continuous attempts” alter their structure from legs to flippers (whales), or from slouching bone structure to upright bone structure?

DAVID: Back to the flimsy idea cell committees can design for future needs. No tiny steps in the fossil record refutes your conjecture.

dhw: Once more: no, they do not design for future needs. They design in response to present needs, and by adapting to present needs, they improve their chances of surviving into the future. The fact that we do not have an inch by inch fossil record of every life form that ever lived is hardly surprising given the vast period of time involved. That is why every new fossil find is hailed as a wonderful discovery.

DAVID: So your prayer is for tiny fossil step discoveries. They don't exist, only the huge gaps you love to ignore. Jumping into water requires giant changes shown by the discontinuous whale series, way beyond the cell committees obvious tiny ability.

I am not praying for anything, although I suspect that is precisely what you are doing when you say you are “waiting for research explanations” of your own inexplicable theory. I don’t ignore the gaps. There are enough whale fossils to show how the species developed, and your “large organisms chauvinism” concerning the ability of cells to change their structure is already exposed by the fact that you agree that they CAN make such changes – only you insist that they can only make small ones.


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