More "miscellany" PARTS ONE & TWO (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 27, 2022, 08:46 (457 days ago) @ David Turell

Cellular intelligence

DAVID: All ID articles assume automaticity of cells.

dhw: I can only comment on the articles you show us, which all seem to focus on the complexities of the automatic processes as proof of design. Perhaps you can find an article which explicitly refutes Shapiro’s theory and opts for God’s 3.8-billion-year-old instructions or his non-stop dabbling. (But even if you can, it still won’t prove anything either way, since even you agree that the odds are 50/50.)

DAVID: ID now occasionally references God.

That does not mean that all ID-ers assume automaticity of cells, let alone that they endorse your theory of divine, 3.8-billion-year-old instructions or constant divine dabbling.

The immensity of the universe

DAVID: His quote said that the general gravity result of all the universe provided the stabilization necessary for us to act as we do. Deny that.

dhw: I can’t find the quote, but it makes no sense anyway [...] And why were the galaxies that had already disappeared during the 9 billion years that preceded our own all necessary for us to keep our feet on the ground? […]

DAVID: […] how do you know galaxies disappear? The Milk Way is estimated as appearing in less than a billion years after the Big Bang, still here and active. The universe is in the business of creating stars which coalesce into galaxies.

dhw: Perhaps disappear is the wrong word. I used “die” originally.

DAVID: See today's entry on perpetual star formation and living galaxies don't die.
And:
DAVID: Galaxies don't just die. They can bump into each other and become absorbed. Yes, stars die, not galaxies. I have never found a description of a dying galaxy.

I drew your attention to this article, so here it is again:
How do galaxies die? - Phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2015-06-galaxies-die.html

It doesn’t matter. My basic question remains the same: how can anyone prove that every one of the 2000,000,000,000 galaxies is necessary to enable us to keep our feet on the ground?

T-cells

DAVID: a complex system like this of many molecules acting in tandem must be designed. It cannot developed step by step.

dhw: I don’t follow your logic. If we are descended from single-celled organisms, our immune system can only have developed step by step as cell communities became increasingly complex and had to cope with an ever-increasing number and variety of diseases.[…]

DAVID:[…] An immune system was always present in every early animal and could build a library of enemies as they appeared. It must be designed. Cannot be evolved stepwise.

And under “ramping up B cells”:

DAVID: More on germinal centers constant recruitment:
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01507-0?dgcid=raven_jbs_aip_email

QUOTE: "Antibody responses are characterized by increasing affinity and diversity over time."

If the library of defences is built up as new enemies appear, then the library develops stepwise. If responses are characterized by increasing affinity and DIVERSITY, then they develop stepwise.

Cell complexity

DAVID: Microtubules are vital conduits for transfer of molecules in the active cell in constant production. Only design can produce this degree of complexity. We now study at a level of function at which Darwin just-so stories won't work.

Why do you continue to snipe at Darwin? There is absolutely nothing in these articles that contradicts his theory of common descent, and his focus is entirely on speciation. Cells are the building blocks of all species, going right back to the beginning, and in later editions Darwin suggests that originally life was “ breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one.” His theory does not exclude design of the original cells.

Four types of nothing
QUOTES: What does “nothing” mean to a scientist in that context? Depending on who you ask, you might get one of four different answers. Here’s what they all mean.

Each of the four definitions is correct in its own way, but what’s most important is understanding what the speaker means when they’re talking about their particular form of nothingness.

Everything we know of certainly came from nothing. The key is to understand how.

DAVID: As a pure scientist he is not allowed to jump to the obvious: God made it all from No. 4, pure nothingness. Of course, it "steps out of reality".

As an impure non-scientist, may I suggest that it would make far more sense to stop saying silly things like “the universe came from nothing” and everything “certainly came from nothing”, which is just about as unscientific a statement as you can possibly make. Nobody can be certain of anything that happened before the Big Bang (if that happened). As for your solution, an immaterial, conscious mind with the power to create and manipulate matter out of its non-material self simply shifts the focus from the source of the universe to the source of your God. If you say he was always there, you might just as well say matter was always there, and the universe came from eternal matter as opposed to eternal non-matter.


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