More "miscellany" PART TWO (General)

by dhw, Monday, November 21, 2022, 08:33 (493 days ago) @ David Turell

PART TWO

How fungus attacks frogs

DAVID: it is still a dog eat dog out there. Since the fungus lifestyle is to feast on others, it is obvious they must use a variety of attacking mechanisms which were designed for them.

dhw: Why “designed for them”?

DAVID: All explained above: now in bold. God designs!!!

Not explained – merely stated. You have your God designing all the attacking mechanisms and presumably all the defensive weapons with which all his specially designed life forms have waged war on one another ever since life began. And every weapon and defence has apparently always been required for his special design of us and our food, although the vast majority were dead ends that had nothing to do with us and our food.

How roots find water

DAVID: From your long discussion all I see is the need for design. The innumerable required spontaneous mutations will take an enormous amount of time if the plants wait for them to arrive.

dhw: I have agreed that “design is required”, but I don’t know what you mean by “spontaneous mutations”. I propose that plants, just like animals, are composed of intelligent cells. They don’t “wait” for changes. They try to find solutions to new problems. Many will fail and die (hence all levels of extinction), but some are clever enough to design their way out of trouble. An “enormous amount of time” is relative. Even your God – who should have found it all easy-peasy since he designs all problems and all solutions – managed to drag out some of his designs over millions of years!

DAVID: Back to speciation by intelligent cells. The Nobel prize awaits.

Give it to Shapiro. Why don’t you consider the logic of the above arguments, instead of just sneering? And please bear in mind that the theory of cellular intelligence is based on research done by different experts in the field. Of course you don’t have to accept it, and you don’t have to accept Shapiro’s application of it to the history of evolution, but since it explains what you cannot explain, and since even you grant that it has a 50/50 chance of being true, you do yourself no favours by ignoring the logic of the proposal I have offered above.

TOAD TONGUES

DAVID: interesting how the anatomy handles the returning momentum of the tongue. This has to be designed all at once. There are too many necessary working parts, so it is irreducibly complex.

dhw: I’m surprised you haven’t told us this astonishing design was necessary to enable God to provide us with our food supply. On the other hand, maybe he simply enjoys designing all these wonders. Or maybe they’re the result of a free-for-all in which his invention of intelligent cells (theistic version) is free to design its own methods of survival.

DAVID: Irreducibly complex is a concept you don't understand. Your imagined cells cannot make this all at once.

If your God can do it, what makes you think he is incapable of inventing mechanisms that can also do it?

A REMINDER ABOUT REALITY

QUOTE: b"It isn’t the job of science, contrary to popular belief, to explain the Universe that we inhabit. Instead, science’s goal is to accurately describe the Universe that we inhabit, and in that it’s been remarkably successful."

DAVID: The reality we experience is not the underlying reality. Note my bold. Science tells us what God did, but not how. dhw always wants to know the how. Good luck!!! This essay is filled with examples of how to answer quantum mechanics with great value. (dhw's bold)

dhw: Since the universe exists, objective reality must exist, but we have no way of knowing the “underlying reality”! Science does not tell us what God did, since it can’t even tell us that God exists (unless one day he decides to make a personal appearance). We would all like to know how and why, but out of the two of us, it’s only you who claim to know both! You insist that there is an eternal mind which deliberately designed the universe and life on Earth (which is “how” the universe and life originated), and he did so because he wanted to design H. sapiens plus our food (which is the “why”).

DAVID: Yep! You have described my belief once again.

I have bolded your remark about me, and shown that you yourself think you know not only how but also why! No need, then, for me to wish you luck! :-)


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