More Miscellany: Bechly reappears (General)

by dhw, Monday, May 13, 2024, 08:14 (171 days ago) @ David Turell

Snakes and fungi

DAVID: To repeat, the acts require conceptualization recognizing how the predator may react to the event created. We humans easily understand, but can an opossum? A snake?

dhw: I don’t know of any prey that does not make an effort to avoid being gobbled up by a predator. Simply running away is one strategy, but I don’t believe the prey “conceptualizes” before it runs. But it all boils down to the fact that I think our fellow creatures are more intelligent than you believe, and don’t require a divine dabble or a 3.8-billion-year-old set of instructions to try and protect themselves whenever there’s a threat to their survival.

DAVID: See today's wasp/virus entry for discussion of purpose conceptualizing.

DAVID: this is a purposeful event to protect eggs. The virus entered into an arrangement with the wasp 100 million years ago. The new protections, in fact, all the accommodations require a multitude of new mutations. Purpose by chance mutation, not likely. Logically, this is a designed mechanism.

Same as above. How the strategy originates is a matter of speculation, but QUOTE: “From then on, it was part of the wasp, passed on to each new generation.” And the chance theory clearly gives way to a form of intelligent control from within the community. QUOTE:: “The parts… still can talk to each other. And they still make products that cooperate with each other to make virus particles.”

Origin of sympathetic nervous system

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: All those purposes are purely humanizing God!!! I hate this silly God of yours. In a theology class you would be laughed out the door. You have no idea how to think about God as true theologians do.

dhw: […] So true theologians all agree that your God’s one and only purpose was to create us and our food, and his method was messy, cumbersome and inefficient; that he is to blame for the slaughter of 50 million people by the flu bug which he designed and could not control, but we shouldn’t be afraid of his bugs because they also do us good; that he did not want a Garden of Eden but allowed/created evil because otherwise he and we would have been bored; that he doesn’t want to be worshipped or recognized because that would make him self-interested; that he is/isn’t interested in his creations; and that although he probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours, he is certainly not human in any sense. Who’s laughing?

DAVID: Amazing that we believers still believe, isn't it? We see all the good even with the bad byproducts.

Do all “true” theologians share the laughable beliefs I have listed above?

Global warming

DAVID: Get informed about climate theory. before swallowing all the Guardian's alarmism. Can you tell yourself you have enough background to make an informed choice? [...]

I don’t have enough knowledge to make an “informed” choice. Nor do you, and unfortunately nor do the experts, since they cannot agree. However, yesterday I listed some of the causes and some of the effects of climate change (melting ice caps, deforestation, lost species, pollution etc.). Are you denying that they are all threats to our planet?

One cubic millimetre of brain

DAVID: Darwin theory type of evolution cannot create this.

dhw: […] 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.

dhw: I ask you a straightforward question, and your answer is to present Bechly’s interpretation of the history of human evolution.[…] the orthodox view is that we are most likely descended from heidelbergiensis, we could have interbred with earlier homos like Neanderthals and Denisovans, and there are lots of similarities between their brains and ours. There are even similarities between chimp brains and ours. So do you think sapiens’ brain was created “de novo” or that it evolved from earlier brains that were less complex? Please answer.

DAVID: Bechly's answer is in bold view. De novo in a giant jump from previous, much simpler forms. We have a giant fore brain and cortex as does the generally equal Neanderthal. Denisovans have not offered us skulls so we don't know if they were equals.

We’re not talking about “equals”, and I’m talking to you, not to Bechly. Past brains, just like current animal brains including other primate brains, have many features in common with the sapiens brain. Yes or no? So do you believe that the sapiens brain was created “de novo”, or that it evolved from earlier brains that were less complex?