More "miscellany" (General)

by David Turell @, Tuesday, August 23, 2022, 16:31 (584 days ago) @ dhw

Vocalisation

DAVID: My point is the first hominins very likely had no membrane by God's design.

dhw: Still very confusing. Please clarify whose membrane your God designed but then removed, and why you think he designed it in the first place if it was a hindrance for the one and only species he wanted to design. And please explain why you reject my theory.

DAVID: My original entry of studies show that monkeys and apes have a membrane that impedes vocalization. We don't have it. This is the article that you've forgotten the info in it:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/humans-primates-voice-control-cords-larynx-membrane

QUOTE: "It’s what we’re missing that makes the difference. Humans have vocal cords, muscles in our larynx, or voice box, that vibrate to produce sound (SN: 11/18/15). But unlike all other studied primates, humans don’t have small bits of tissue above the vocal cords called vocal membranes. That uniquely human trait helps people control their voices well enough to produce the sounds that are the building blocks of spoken language, researchers report in the Aug. 12 Science."

dhw: Thank you. I had indeed forgotten it. So we are left with the mystery of the disappearing membranes. My proposal was that they disappeared when our ancestors needed to expand their range of communication, and did so by trying to formulate new sounds.As a result of their efforts to do so, the obstructive membrane disappeared, and various changes took place in the brain and voice box – much as I believe pre-whale legs would have changed into flippers as a result of their swimming instead of walking. If I remember rightly, your theory is that your God operated on a group of sleeping pre-humans to remove the membrane and fiddle with the voice box, so they woke up next morning with the ability to make words. Please correct me if I’m wrong and tell us what you think your God might have done.

You are correct: human larynx lower, requiring an epiglottis, arched roof of mouth, improved tongue muscles for delicate speech movements, removed membrane, and finally a giant brain to accept the job of speech development. All requiring complex design to create these results. Not designed by some laryngeal cells.


Antifreeze

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

dhw: 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?

DAVID: At least scientists can actually calculate the odds against finding the right protein. It ain't a piece of cake.

dhw: So what are the odds against the existence of an invisible, unknown, unknowable, sourceless mind which creates universes? That ain’t a piece of cake either.

DAVID: But a mind had to do it.

dhw: Did minds evolve from matter, or did matter evolve from a mind? I’m stuck on 50/50.

We came from pure inorganic matter long before any mental matter arrived.


Immune system

DAVID: At the bacterial and bacteriophage level, mimics ours:

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/prokaryotes-are-capable-of-learning-to-recog...

dhw: May I suggest that ours developed from theirs?

Absolutely.


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