More "miscellany" (General)

by dhw, Sunday, August 21, 2022, 12:28 (586 days ago) @ David Turell

Are we alone? and Rare earth hypothesis

DAVID: You have no idea of how to think about God as philosophers of religion do when they believe. Totally foreign to you.

Please stop hiding behind these vague generalizations! We are discussing specific theories concerning a possible God’s possible purposes, methods and nature. If your philosophers have all taught you that your theories are correct, even though they “make sense only to God” and therefore not to you or to them, then so be it.

Vocalisation

dhw: Was it hominins/hominids he operated on? Or did he preprogramme the design and eventual removal of the membrane 3.8 billion years ago? I sometimes struggle with your two theories, so please give us the details.

DAVID: I've been overly clear above: there is no soft tissue evidence, but it can be assumed every big= brained hominin came sans membrane, or it disappeared with further big-brain development. It had to be gone for speech to develop. Actually, it is a form of advance by devolution of a part. Thank Behe for pointing out such events.

All rather confusing. If there wasn’t a membrane, then I don’t know what all the fuss is about. If there was a membrane, I suggest it disappeared when humans started to make sounds which required its disappearance. These new sounds then progressively evolved into what we call language. Your theory is presumably that your God (who would have designed the membrane in the first place, since he designs everything) popped in to perform a membranectomy on a group of sleeping hominins, who woke up next morning as homos with the ability to speak in words. Please confirm or correct.

Antifreeze

DAVID: How is the specialize protein found???

dhw: I don’t know of anyone who can answer your new question.

DAVID: ID does!! They calculate the odds of finding the right protein and publish peer reviewed papers on the subject in the literature. The finding is the major problem with your vague answer. The odds are enormous.

dhw: Yes, the odds against life itself, let alone reproduction and evolution/speciation are enormous. That does not tell us how life etc. came into being, or how the specialized protein was found! ID-ers like yourself say it was done by an unknown, sourceless being who has lived for ever and ever. It’s one theory. Nobody knows the facts.

DAVID: The enormity of the odds favors a recognition of God.

What are the odds favouring the existence of an unknown, conscious being, who creates a seemingly infinite universe (or universes), who has simply been there for ever and ever, and who pops in to deliver a protein to make sure one particular fish in one particular location doesn’t freeze to death, because otherwise we humans wouldn’t have anything to eat?

Plate tectonics

QUOTES: "Circulation collapse would have been a death sentence for anything that could not swim closer to the surface and the life-giving oxygen still present in the atmosphere," Ridgwell said. Creatures of the deep include bizarre-looking fish, giant worms and crustaceans, squid, sponges and more.
"'The ocean allows life to flourish, but it can take that life away again. Nothing rules that out as continental plates continue to move."

DAVID:: another way plate tectonics support life.

dhw: But they also take life away. It’s yet another example of the way in which life forms change in accordance with environmental conditions. See also under climate change: “New climates themselves could be stimulating evolution to ultimately produce very diverse new forms.”
This interaction is what has always governed the nature of ever changing ecosystems in what seems to me like a vast free-for-all as life has evolved into “bizarre-looking” species. (A wonderful observation! No doubt giant worms and squid and sponges would regard humans as “bizarre-looking” if only they could speak our language!)

DAVID: All part of entwined ecosystems feeding all of us.

As usual, you leave out the billions of past years with all their different extinct organisms and ecosystems that had no connection with us but which, you claim, were an “absolute requirement” for our future existence.

Beetle fungus symbiosis

DAVID: the fungus and the beetle both attack the poor plant and accidently found each other. That is how I view it.

Me too. I would imagine that a lot of symbiotic relationships began by chance, and once they were found to be useful, the respective life forms were intelligent enough to perpetuate them.


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