More "miscellany" PARTS ONE & TWO (General)

by David Turell @, Monday, September 19, 2022, 17:55 (556 days ago) @ dhw

Brain evolution

DAVID: We can only discuss size not organization. The human brain has five layers of specialized neurons in the prefrontal cortex. There is evidence, from its current massive use, that it can be used, as is, forever. With human control of Earth now evolution is over.

dhw: I am not denying that it can be used as it is forever! I am pointing out that the additional cells in pre-sapiens and in sapiens would have been needed when they first appeared, as opposed to their being provided for no special purpose in anticipation of conditions that did not yet exist.

But that is exactly not how or brain can be interpreted. If it arrived useful forever, that means it arrived in anticipation of that use, far more useful than needed at its arrival.

dhw: We agree that in our case complexification took over from expansion. Your last sentence is a non sequitur. Some folk are predicting that the human race will end in 50 years’ time, but as neither of us will be here then, let alone in 5 billion years’ time, I hesitate to make a prophecy.

You don't have to


DAVID: In today's world climate systems represent God's work, but local weather events are uncontrolled results.

dhw: Last week you had “God setting up climate systems, no local weather events”, and “speciation occurs in general climate conditions, not in a little box contained to a little area of the Earth”.” We were not just talking about today’s conditions. You have now agreed that speciation does take place locally, so what are you saying here? In former times, God did control local conditions after all? Your theories never cease to contradict one another.

DAVID: All I have said is climate is general and under God's control, all weather is local and not under His control. Since God speciates, weather doesn't matter.

dhw: By “weather” I don’t mean local showers, sunny periods, and gusts of wind. We’re talking here of major and permanent changes affecting local areas as opposed to the whole planet. Even with your theory, do you think your God speciates without taking into consideration local environmental conditions under which the new species must live?

I think God considers existing climatic conditions.


ANT WOUND TREATMENT

DAVID: Pure instinct.

dhw: In all these discussions, we are concerned with your God’s purposes, methods and nature. Why must a theist believe that God preprogrammed or dabbled all the intelligent works of ants, and did not give them the intelligence to do their own designing?

DAVID: Termite nests have intricate air conditioning systems. Provided by God's design help. Same with ants.

dhw: Why do you just keep repeating your theory? Why do you consider it to be impossible for ants and termites to have autonomous intelligence of their own?

Because with ID, I accept them as instinctual automations


GAPS IN EVOLUTION CAUSE DISCONTINUITY

dhw: Are you saying the first jaws came 150 million years after the Cambrian? If so, do you regard 150 million years as a ”leap”?

DAVID: Believe it or not, fish at without Jaws until then. The sudden appearance is a leap in design then!

dhw: Since new fossils are being found all the time, I would suggest that it’s possible that during the 150 million years there were earlier species with earlier forms of jaws. We do not expect to find a complete record of every step in the evolution of every species, which is why every fossil find is regarded as a sensation.

Bechly, a Ph.D. in archeology, says new important findings will be rare. Most current findings have filled out the story. The current jaws are a tremendous finding. Jaws had to appear at some point in the history of evolution.


Is life's biochemistry fine-tuned?

DAVID: I have constantly presented complex biochemical processes that are irreducibly complex and require a designing mind. It is an easy step to accept its existence.

dhw: I’ve only reproduced this in order to express my agreement. The complexities of life and certain psychic experiences are my main reasons for not embracing atheism, while the concept of an eternal, immaterial conscious mind without any source yet capable of creating the vastness of a material universe and the intricacies of the cell seems to me to belong to the realm of man-made fantasy rather than objective reality. But of course one way or the other, I am wrong.

Not fantasy, a logical requirement.


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