More "miscellany" PART ONE (General)

by David Turell @, Monday, December 05, 2022, 19:35 (479 days ago) @ dhw

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

dhw: 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.

See theoretical thread: "Evolution is the process by which the physical characteristics of types of creatures change over time, new types of creatures develop, and others disappear. (my bold)

dhw: 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.

dhw: 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)?

My experience tells me direct design is always easier


Bacterial intelligence: stress responses (Animals)

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.

dhw: 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.

Apples and elephants: singles cells are sole survivors trying to live their independent lives. Cells in our bodies are all working together to keep us alive. They are not like bacteria and do not have the same abilities


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.

dhw: 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.

It is your imagination. My God programmed all organims to have cooperating committees of cells.


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??

dhw: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.


See theoretical thread: "Evolution is the process by which the physical characteristics of types of creatures change over time, new types of creatures develop, and others disappear. (my bold)


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