More "miscellany" PARTS ONE & TWO (General)

by dhw, Saturday, November 05, 2022, 07:54 (510 days ago) @ David Turell

Talbott’s Agency

dhw: Talbott says that organisms take their own decisions. You say they only obey God’s instructions. Do ID-ers all agree with you or not?

DAVID: I agree with the ID'ers. Life is designed to make decisions guided by designed information.

Yet more nebulous flannel. Life doesn’t make decisions. Living things make decisions. What is “designed information”? Previously you have used the clear word “instructions”, so once more, do your fellow ID-ers believe that all bacteria and all cell communities follow God’s instructions for every decision that needs to be made? Yes or no will do.

Horizontal gene transfer

dhw: […] If he designed “all of life” and did so for the sole purpose of creating us and our food (the basis of your theory of evolution), do you believe that snake genes in frogs were “necessary” for your God to fulfil that purpose? If not, what purpose do you think they fulfil?

DAVID: The principal is God designed everything present. God designed/allowed genomes to have horizontal transfer, in an ecosystem that supplied food on Madagascar.

“Allowed” is very different from “designed”. The mechanism for horizontal transfer may have been designed by your God, but if snakes and frogs were “allowed” to use it, you have a free-for-all. According to your theory, “designed” would mean that there would have been no food supply for humans on Madagascar if snake genes had not been transferred into frogs. Is that what you mean?

Toxoplasma

DAVID: […] God's teleology is known only to God.

dhw: […]. If only God knows his purpose(s), why do you insist that his purpose for creating “all of life”, including putting snake genes in frogs, was to create us and our food? How do you know that his purpose was not to create a free-for-all? […]

DAVID: Your analysis of a 'possible' God results in a God of diminished powers. My God knows exactly what he is doing and does it.

So does mine, but in none of my alternatives (with the possible exception of experimentation) is he so incompetent that he has to create countless life forms and ecosystems that have no connection with his purpose. There is no diminishing of powers if he wants a free-for-all, or if – like many artists and writers – he sets out on a voyage of discovery to see how ideas can develop.

Black hole maths benefits

dhw: So when you say yes, even organisms without a brain possess their own form of intelligence and it is God-given, you mean no, they do not possess their own form of intelligence, because it is God who does all the thinking. […]

DAVID: All I mean is signs of intelligence can be real innate intelligence or simply appears that way since it is following God-given rules. Applies to single cells and organisms.

So your yes meant no, because you are convinced that single cells and organisms are not intelligent.

Bacterial colonies

dhw: You praise Shapiro for his amazing work on bacteria, but when after a lifetime’s study he concludes that cells are intelligent entities, you bluntly inform us that “No cell has innate intelligence”. Your mind is closed.

DAVID: My opinion has as much validity as yours. Odds are still 50/50.

I am quite happy with 50/50. I only object to your 100% no.

Migration

QUOTES: "A young bar-tailed godwit appears to have set a non-stop distance record for migratory birds by flying at least 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) from Alaska to the Australian state of Tasmania.”

DAVID: trained by ancestor's previous daredevil adventures or by a designer?

dhw: The researchers don’t know why it took such a long route, but perhaps you can explain why your God decided to take the little godwit all that way. (Maybe he liked the name and was anxious for it to get into the Guinness Book of Records?)

DAVID: All I can revert to is it was all part of God's plan.

So even if the little godwit got lost, it didn’t get lost because God pushed it in the wrong direction in order to fulfil his plan, which was to...do what, I wonder. Don’t you think you’re carrying this purposeful divine dabbling theory a bit too far? ;-)

MADAGASCAR

QUOTE: “The growing human population led to extensive changes to the Madagascar landscape and the loss of all large-bodied vertebrates that once lived there, they suggest”.

Ugh, ugh, humans messing things up even then! Do you think this was this all part of God’s plan as well? (Just asking. :-) )

TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGY

DAVID: I appreciate your Darwinist criticism of the article.

Thank you. End of thread.

Neutrino detectors

DAVID[…] We still have no answer for dhw who wonders why the universe is so big and so complex, if all God wanted was to create some humans on Earth. My simple answer is God knows what He is doing.

If God exists, of course he knows what he is doing, but that does not mean he designed billions of stars and countless dead-end life forms for the sole purpose of creating us and our food! Please stop kidding yourself that your theory is a fact!


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