More "miscellany" PART ONE (General)

by dhw, Monday, December 05, 2022, 14:38 (480 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Planned failures are not the disasters you imply. All forms of creation must have dead ends. Stop your illogical distortion of evolution.

dhw: A failure is a failure. Why must your all-powerful God’s one and only desire to create us and our food be preceded by dead ends, which you also call “failed experiments”? Why do you humanize God by comparing his unique brand of evolution with our human brands?

DAVID: Can you define an evolutionary process without dead ends/failures? Yes or no.

Why don’t you answer my questions? My answer to yours is yes: I define an evolutionary process as one in which every stage is developed from earlier stages. If you are asking whether I can think of any such process that has not entailed failures, the answer is no. Your forms of evolution are those developed by fallible humans beings, and yes our political, philosophical, economic systems, architecture and technology etc, have evolved with loads of failures – as has your God’s evolution. Congratulations, you have now granted him the same fallibility as ourselves.

I asked why it was “simpler” for your God to design every innovation, lifestyle etc. individually than to design a mechanism to do it all.

DAVID: Explained ad nauseum. Easier to do it yourself than teaching some one to do it.

But (a) you have him teaching lifestyles, strategies, natural wonders, solutions to problems etc., and (b) “easier to do it yourself” would only apply if he wanted a particular design (e.g. H. sapiens). So wouldn’t it be easier to create intelligent cells to design all the things he doesn’t need, and then he could just pop in and do a dabble if he wanted something special (H. sapiens)?

Bacterial intelligence: stress responses (Animals)

DAVID: They are designed to cooperate in multicellular organisms. God's design forms them into cell communities in each separate organ system.

dhw: So they are designed individually to do their own designing in order to survive, but when they cooperate, God has to do it for them, and the design is not meant to help them survive. Maybe that makes sense to God, but it doesn’t to me.

DAVID: Why do you distort and misinterpret what I present? The bold appears out of thin air. It is nothing like my prior statement.

dhw: Here are your statements under the significant heading “Bacterial intelligence”: “Bacteria appeared with the ability to edit their own DNA.” “The abilities of bacteria to survive as single cells involved extra capacities given by God’s design. In multicellular forms survival is not an immediate issue “God’s design forms them into cell communities in each separate organ system.” Please tell me what I have distorted.

DAVID: Bacteria have those abilities to help their single cell survival. In multicellular organisms the cells individual functions contribute to overall living. Vast difference between the two types of cells.

There is no distortion in my original bold. In most organisms, overall living is tantamount to survival, and you have not explained why single cells lose their God-given intelligence when they cooperate.

dhw: You can imagine autonomous beings with the ability to do their own designing, but you can’t imagine them being able to form autonomous communities which also do their own designing. Your imagination has strange limitations.

DAVID: What autonomous beings design new species???

dhw: The subject here is bacteria, and the ability of single cells to edit their own DNA, whereas apparently God has to do it for them if they cooperate in communities. The answer to your question, though, is – yet again - Shapiro’s theory: cells are “cognitive (sentient) entities”. They are “built to evolve; they have the ability to alter their hereditary characteristics rapidly…”, and “evolutionary novelty arises from the production of new cells and multicellular structures as a result of cellular self modifications….”

DAVID: Fully an extrapolated theory from his bacterial studies, never on multicellular organisms.

You asked what autonomous beings designed new species, and I told you. I don’t know why you assume Shapiro knows nothing about multicellular organisms, but your opposition to his theory is irrelevant. I’ve answered your question, and I remain surprised at the limitations you impose on your imagination, when it can conjure up a divine 3.8-billion-year-old book of instructions for the whole of life, but can’t imagine autonomous beings forming autonomous communities.

Birth canal and tooth development

dhw: You wrote: “With his designed preparation most pregnancies worked in delivery, but bad things happens sometimes, even now.” You can extend that observation to your whole view of your all-powerful God’s designs. Every failure raises the theistic possibility that either his designs were/are imperfect, or he did NOT design everything.

DAVID: He designed everything, even dead-end failures which are required in any evolutionary process. Yes or no??

Maybe he did not design everything. My answer is no, they are not required. Dead-end failures OCCUR in our fallibly human political, economic, educational systems etc., and they occur in the evolution of life, which as I pointed out earlier makes your God as fallible as us humans.


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