More Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Saturday, May 11, 2024, 08:37 (46 days ago) @ David Turell

Reznick’s guppies

dhw: The second post adds: "Organisms are problem-solving entities not passive objects being shaped by the environment.”
Yet more support for Shapiro, though a few weeks ago you were telling us that his theory was already dead and buried.

DAVID: I remember noting this Shapiro support somewhere.

Plenty of somewheres, and I always commend you for your integrity in producing such articles.

Snakes and funguses

DAVID: a learned instinct or a designed action? Since the activity is seen in several types of insects and such activity would protect species from extinction, i believe it is a designed instinct. How would a species survive with totally unprotected eggs?

dhw: In order to survive, all species find ways to protect themselves and their young, and it only takes one discovery (by accident or by clever thinking) to hit on an idea. If it doesn’t work, it will be jettisoned mighty fast. If it does work, it will survive and be passed on. Hence, an action initially designed by the organism and then passed on as a learned instinct.

DAVID: Another just-so story. The action requires conceptualizing a good result. Not likely in these species.

All our fellow creatures devise ways of protecting themselves and their young. If they don’t, they won’t survive. You present us with article after article demonstrating their problem-solving intelligence – usually in pursuit of food – but you still refuse to believe that they can work out ways of surviving when their lives are at stake.

Origin of sympathetic nervous system

DAVID: This answers dhw's complaint that God made 99.9% of unnecessary organisms just to throw them away. They were all part of a purposeful development, step-by-step to a goal, or as in evolution steps to many, many goals.

dhw: I don’t know what “many, many goals” you are referring to, since you insist that your God only had one goal (us plus food.) When lines diverge, it’s common sense that they will keep whatever is useful (= natural selection), and as conditions change, it’s also common sense that more changes may take place in order to meet the new requirements. Clearly the sympathetic nerve system was not one of the innovations you announce as having been divinely invented “de novo” by your God, i.e. without any predecessors, and the lamprey is still here as one of 0.1% of surviving lines, and not descended from the 99.9% which your God inefficiently “had to” design and cull for reasons known only to himself.

DAVID: You hate God running evolution, the same evolution that supposedly happened with complex designs like our brain. See brain entry.

Please stop pretending that my opposition to your illogical theory of God’s messy, inefficient handling of evolution means that I hate God running evolution. I hate your silly theory. All my alternatives have your God running evolution in a different way or for a different purpose.

Global warming

dhw: The “experts” disagree. I’m surprised that you yourself are so expert that you know which of them are right.

DAVID: You'd be surprised how much weather background articles I have studied over the years out of interest. I've logically picked my group of experts.

And you assume that the other group of experts has not studied the subject for years, or if they have, they are not as well informed as you.

Viral biome calms mice:

DAVID: We need to stop fearing viruses and bacteria. They are here for our good.

dhw: They are here for our good, but your all-powerful, all-knowing God gave them free will to kill 50 million people in a single year. You have explicitly BLAMED your God for this evil, but now you tell us not to be afraid of the bacteria and viruses which can kill us, because God made them all for our good, although he “had to” let them kill us as well, so that they could do us good. I wonder which theologians support this theory of yours.

DAVID: Surprise! The folks who produce theodicy articles.

I will graciously refrain from making any comment.

One cubic millimetre of brain

QUOTE: "It's just a millimeter on each side – but 57,000 cells, 150 million synapses, and 230 millimeters of ultrafine veins are all packed into that microscopic space.

DAVID: see the mind-blowing illustrations in the article, a three-minute adventure. We can never fully understand the connectome. Darwin theory type of evolution cannot create this.

Absolutely stunning. It’s a pity you have to muddy the waters with your usual sideswipe at Darwin. Of course he knew nothing about these complexities, but his focus is on the development from simple to complex. When discussing the evolution of the eye, he looks back at gradations from the current “perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple", but “how a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated.”. Do you believe that the sapiens brain was created “de novo”, or that it evolved from earlier brains that were less complex? If it’s the latter, then it’s covered by Darwin’s theory of common descent.