More "miscellany" PARTS ONE and TWO (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 25, 2023, 12:30 (428 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You have your God designing 99% of failures and 1% of successes. Forget analogies. Do you regard a 99% failure rate as an indication of competence?

DAVID: The result speaks for itself. we are here to debate it.

Why do you regard a view of life’s history comprising 99% of failures as proof of greater competence than a view of the same history that contains no mistakes at all?

Free will

dhw: You accept the argument in favour of free will, that your decisions are your decisions, regardless of the influences that have made you what you are. Other people accept the argument against free will, that nobody can know all the influences that have shaped their decisions for them. You don’t need to keep telling us that you accept the first argument.

DAVID: I'll leave you on your indecisive picket fence.

My purpose was to point out that the decision on whether we do or do not have free will depends entirely on what we mean by the term.

Fungus kills nematodes

DAVID: All parts of an ecosystem are integral to its function. God has unquestionably designed all forms.

dhw: You never give a straight answer to a straight question. If one part is “integral” to a system, then the system would break down without it. Do you think our ecosystem would break down without your God having designed this one particular fungus with its unique survival strategy? If not, why do you think your God designed it?

DAVID: I view the bush as a purposeful whole for our food supply. The fungus is a purposeful part.

The purpose of the fungus’ survival strategy is to survive. That does not mean it is integral to the system which enables us to survive. Do you think your God specially designed its unique strategy because otherwise we would not survive? I’ll give you an answer: no, you don’t. You have no idea why your God would have specially designed this particular fungus’s particular method of survival. If I’m wrong, please tell us why you think he designed it. (This, of course, is one of countless examples – my earlier favourite was the weaverbird’s nest.)

Immune system: innate and secondary

DAVID: All antibodies are the same except for the identified antigen enemy.

dhw: I’m baffled. If all antibodies are the same, please explain why we need different vaccinations to counter different diseases and their variations? And please explain this entry from one of my encyclopedias: “Lymphocytes produce a wide variety of highly specific antibodies.”

DAVID: Antibodies are applied to specific antigens (disease organisms), but the antibodies are generally the same initial form with minor modifications to fit the antigen. All antibodies made the same way.

That is a far cry from the claim that all antibodies are the same. It is the modifications that form the ever growing “library”, just as the process of evolution – by which organs and organisms descend from earlier organs and organisms – takes place through modifications and additions to existing “libraries” of cells.

dhw: I am proposing that the immune system evolved just as all our other systems evolved. Whether your God designed the changes or not, the cells still have to adapt to new requirements.

DAVID: Of course.

Agreement at last.:-)

Body heat

DAVID: We are here despite your imagined God-struggles against all odds. Yes, He is all-powerful and completely successful.

dhw: A new definition of omnipotence and complete success: “achieving one’s goal by relying on luck to provide the necessary conditions, and making mistakes and conducting experiments of which 99% are failures”. I suggest: “achieving one’s goal without reliance on luck and without making mistakes or conducting failed experiments”.

DAVID: Luck is your invention for God to overcome. I continue to expand on your initial thought. Evolution is a messy waY to produce a desired result, but it worked.

Luck is not my invention. It is you who quote Raup (survival depends on luck) and you who tell us that your God did not control environmental changes, but had to fit his designs to whatever conditions he was presented with. I have never said that evolution is a messy way to produce a desired result. But it most certainly would be a messy way to achieve what you believe to have been the desired result. I needn’t repeat the alternative theistic theories I have offered you, all of which you agree fit in logically with the history but which you reject because for you a 99% failure rate is godlike, whereas achieving a purpose without making mistakes is far too human.


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