More "miscellany" PARTS ONE & TWO (General)

by dhw, Sunday, March 12, 2023, 11:53 (383 days ago) @ David Turell

Asteroids

DAVID: I've proven to you environment doesn't matter. Life survived through snowball Earth!!

dhw: You have proven no such thing! Environment decides whether species can survive or not!

DAVID: Adaptability is the real decider!

How does the ability to survive changes in the environment prove that the environment “doesn’t matter”? If it wasn’t for changes in the environment, adaptability would not be needed!

dhw: And in your whacky theory, environment limits your God’s choices of what species he can or can’t design! : For instance, without extra oxygen for humans to breathe, he could not have designed humans.

DAVID: There are different environments all over the Earth. God is not limited in what He can design.

At all times, his individual designs are limited to those which can fit in with particular environments. Why have you ignored my example of oxygen for humans?

dhw: The nest apparently requires his control, but a world-shattering environmental event (Chixculub) which destroys the vast majority of his creations doesn’t matter.

DAVID: Chixculub allowed exiting mammals to burgeon whether controlled or not!

But apparently this world-shattering change to the environment didn’t matter. And yet the weaverbird’s nest and the opossum’s play-dead strategy require your God’s full attention and control. As I said, you give your all-powerful God strange priorities.

Epigenetic control of gene expression

dhw: Do all ID-ers believe that your God gave our ancestors new backs and legs bbBEFOREbb they descended from the trees?

DAVID: Lucy was designed to leave trees. When, how, unknown

But you believe that your God gave our ancestors their straightened backs and legs BEFORE they left the trees, and I am simply asking if all ID-ers agree with you.

Fine tuning

dhw: […]are there different forms of life out there? If there are, then tweaking our own solar system could simply have resulted in different forms of life here. If there aren’t, why the billions of unknown solar systems just for the sake of ours? […]

DAVID: The whole universe is fine-tuned for life, not just our little bit!!! Our cosmology can only describe what it is, not the 'why' of the size.

dhw: We don’t know the “whole” universe! One website tells us we know 500 solar systems out of a possible 2 trillion. And you’ve still ignored all my comments above.

DAVID: Unanswerable. We are stuck with what exists as God-created for His own reasons. Further research may explain it or not.

Of course nobody “knows” anything. And if your God exists, we have no idea why he would have designed a possible 2 trillion solar systems, or what they might contain. So why insist that 2 trillion solar systems must have been necessary for him to design us and our food?

Hard steps

dhw: As far as I can see, all he’s saying is that we don’t know if there is intelligent, technological life elsewhere in the universe, but if there is any and if it’s like us (which means hard steps), it would have to be like us, but not necessarily just like us, and maybe even our hard steps aren’t as hard as we think they are. Are you any the wiser?

DAVID: The appearance of life is miraculous. The hard steps theory support that view.

I agree. But we don’t need a “hard steps theory”, which merely lists certain features of life that might or might not be needed to produce intelligent, technological life like ours. Eyes, noses, mouths, toes, whiskers, bacteria and viruses are all "miracles".

Stone tools purposeful or accidental

QUOTE: "For Zeray Amelseged at the University of Chicago, the study mostly illustrates the gradual progression of cognitive evolution in primates. “Is what we find in the archaeological record just a result of process without intentionality?

Sorry, but the heading and this comment are a bit of an insult to the monkeys and, by inference, to lots of other animals and birds. If monkeys use stones to crack nuts, you could hardly have a clearer indication of “purpose” and “intentionality”.

DAVID: […] Despite the confusion with ancient stone tools and possible monkey production, humans did understand how to use them in butchering, making hides useful by scraping them, as some of the cognitive evidence.

Spot on. The history of tools, like the rest of our civilisation, is one of increasing sophistication from our animal beginnings. Just think of ants and beavers and even our beloved weaverbird’s nest….No purpose or intentionality?


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