More "miscellany" PART ONE (General)

by dhw, Friday, March 17, 2023, 11:20 (12 days ago) @ David Turell

PART ONE

A massive extinction in the late Devonian

QUOTE: "The oxygen-depleted seas were too much for Devonian marine life. Researchers estimate that 75% of all life went extinct by the end of the Devonian."

DAVID: I do not think God controlled this event but it allowed Him to bring new organisms on the scene.

dhw: Curiouser and curiouser. Your all-powerful, always-in-control God had no control over the Devonian loss of oxygen, which “allowed” him to design new organisms. This means he couldn’t have designed the new organisms without the chance change in conditions, so his range of designs was always restricted by whatever conditions chanced to occur. Similarly, 200 million years earlier, according to your theory, he would have relied on luck to provide the oxygen that "allowed" him to start evolution all over again by designing our ancestors plus food from scratch, thereby rendering 100% of his previous designs unnecessary.

DAVID: Your bumbling view of a clueless God. God create the cyanobacteria which gave us oxygen. If God was so restricted in your distorted version how did He manage to produce our brain, the most comples item in our univeres?

It’s as if you have never read your own theory! It’s YOU who claim that 99% of his designs were mistakes etc, and it’s YOU who say he had no control over the environment which determines whether organisms live or die! Yours is the bumbling clueless God! My three theistic alternatives all include our brain, but they dispense with your concept of a bumbling, clueless God.(See the "David's evolution" thread for details.)

Ecosystems and mistakes

DAVID: Plese try to remember God gave organisms limited adaptability because God did the speciations Himself.

dhw: You don’t need to remind me that I have just reminded you that it was your God’s faulty design (not evolution’s) that led to his 99% of mistakes and failed experiments.

DAVID: Limited adaptability is not a mistake if it is purposeful as stated just above.

His doing the speciations himself is not a purpose! Your version of his purpose is that it was us and our food, and your version of the limited adaptability is that it was due to faulty design, and the 99% were mistakes and failed experiments because they had nothing to do with what you think was his purpose. If you now wish to withdraw this whole theory of your God as an incompetent blunderer, please say so and have done with it.

How bacterial flagella operate

dhw: How do you think bad bacteria manage to find ways of countering new human efforts to destroy them? Did your God plant instructions to make sure they could automatically carry on killing us?

DAVID: God coded bacterial DNA to know good food from bad sense enemies and respond to them.

dhw: So he coded them to carry on killing us. Fine! I suggest that what your God “coded” (if he exists) can only have been the MEANS of sensing, processing, and responding – unless he keeps popping in with new instructions for every new situation. The means, of course, would be intelligence.

DAVID: Just what God did, and it all works automatically.

Do you mean he keeps popping in with instructions? Since new problems are arising all the time, and technology is improving all the time, I wonder if future research will develop the means of filming your God popping in with his instructions. Should be fascinating.

Gut organisms direct T cells

dhw: [...[ The gut organisms ARE bacteria! And the T-cells depend on these “good” bacteria for their ability to fight the “bad” bacteria. […] I’d say this is a clear example of bacterial intelligence directing cellular action, and I wonder to what extent Shapiro's theory of cellular intelligence depends on the communication between bacterial cells and other types of cell. I’m with Hanna:

HANNA: “I’m personally intrigued by the beauty of this cross-communication that we have in our body,” says Hanna. “They are impacting us in ways beyond our understanding.”

DAVID: My understanding is God is a marvelous designer.

If he exists, then I agree. Such intelligent micro-organisms are certainly marvels of design.