More "miscellany" PARTS ONE & TWO (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 17, 2023, 11:12 (436 days ago) @ David Turell

Four types of nothing

DAVID: God is no issue for Guth. His work excludes divine action.

dhw: And since you believe in God, and you accept the possibility that your God might have created universes before ours, you obviously do not accept that Guth proved there was nothing before the BB. Please can we end this pointless discussion?

DAVID: Can't you see I accept Guth sans God.

I don’t know how a believer can accept a theory which excludes God, and in any case even sans God, how can Guth prove that nothing preceded our Big Bang? See the next entry:

Let's study ID: current declaration

DAVID: Something caused our creation, if you accept cause and effect as a valid concept.

I certainly do. That is why I do not see how Guth could “prove” that nothing preceded our BB, and why you rejected the idea yourself, although you still go on defending it.

New genes from non-coding DNA

DAVID: All their research showed was that cells act intelligently, which can be the result of intelligent directions in DNA.

dhw: The fact that cells act intelligently is not a bad basis for the belief that they are intelligent. In the contradiction I pointed out, you stated that “it is easier for God to do it himself, than get involved with the rigmarole of providing a huge set of detailed instructions”, but here you go again with your huge set of detailed instructions.

DAVID: Only a huge set of details make a new species. Either God acts on them, or He gives the details to the cells to do it.

Or he gives cells the intelligence to do their own designing. And in the above quote you seemed pretty sceptical about instructions, although in the first quote you talk of “intelligent directions” (a synonym for instructions). I am still baffled by your belief that it’s easier for God to conduct every single failed experiment himself than to let the cells do their own thing.

DAVID: My firsthand designs accomplished two very livable homes, a barn, admired by many visitors, two very functional medical offices, along with two very functional dialysis units that hired architects failed to produce. My designs came from my evolution mentally of necessary flow.

dhw: I am full of admiration. Your success rate is clearly vastly superior to that of your imagined God, whose “cumbersome” firsthand efforts apparently required 99% of mistakes and failures before he could design what he wanted. But please don’t get me wrong. I am not criticizing God. I simply don’t accept your vision of him as a bumbler who would invent such a mess of a system.

DAVID: I don't accept it either if you would read and accept my entries about Him.

I don’t see how your belief in his 99% failure rate puts him on a par with you and your 100% success rate.

IMMUNITY SYSTEM COMPLEXITY

DAVID: As usual you twist automatism into active intelligence.

dhw: As usual, after admitting countless times that the odds are 50/50, you twist possible active intelligence into unquestionable automatism.

DAVID: I have my reasonable 50% to stay with. The reason is the ID declaration entered today.

dhw: The ID declaration (see below) does not make any reference to cellular intelligence. I am quite happy to accept the logic of the argument that cells and their intelligence are too complex not to have been designed.

DAVID: Thank you. Now accept the designer as an immaterial mind.

If your designer exists, I accept that he would be an immaterial mind, unless...here’s a thought…he’s a material being who discovered the secret of immortality!;-)

Derision

QUOTE: "'We didn't get to where we are now by happenstance. The problems we have today with warfare, inequality, disease and poor diets, all resulted from the changes that occurred when agriculture started," Larsen said.

DAVID: this shows that living humans are transforming the Earth to a greater degree than previous top predators. All part of evolving the earth to fit it for humans.

So warfare, inequality, disease and poor diet are all part of evolving the earth to “fit it for humans”. Perhaps we should add our astonishing ability to eliminate other life forms, to create havoc with the atmosphere, and ultimately to destroy ourselves and the planet. Interestingly, Larsen’s general thesis follows the same path traced by my late brother (also a professor of anthropology) Peter J. Wilson in his book The Domestication of the Human Species 35 years ago (Yale University Press, 1988).


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