More Miscellany: Bechly reappears (General)

by dhw, Monday, May 27, 2024, 11:38 (30 days ago) @ David Turell

ID science

dhw: Initially you told us ID scientists didn’t mention God either. Shapiro’s theory does not exclude God – he simply doesn’t go into the origin of cellular intelligence. Do ID scientists agree with you that your God’s method of fulfilling his one and only goal (us plus food) was “messy”, “cumbersome” and “inefficient”?

DAVID: Never discussed.

dhw: So unlike Shapiro, you don’t have any scientists supporting your theory of evolution.

DAVID: ID believes God used a designed evolution to design humans!!

But they apparently don’t share your belief that we plus food were his one and only purpose, and so he messily and inefficiently had to design and cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with his purpose.

DAVID: Most are religious, but some like Bechly simply accept the idea of a designer did it.

This of course is the major problem for agnostics like myself. The general argument for design and against chance is powerful, but the argument against a nebulous, eternal, unknowable, sourceless designer that has always been there and can create universes is equally powerful. If we skip the question of origin, though, and focus only on evolution, we certainly have an alternative to chance and to divine creation of every species. And that is Shapiro’s theory.

Duckbill dinosaurs and trans-oceanic dispersal

DAVID: Bechly continues with a wry look at Darwinist just-so explanations: swimming, rafting, the geology is wrong, there were archipelagoes to skip along, etc. Any excuse to explain the fossil dispersal.

dhw: So what is Bechly’s explanation?

DAVID: A designer did it.

dhw: Did what? Carried duckbill dinosaurs across the ocean? Or decided to create brand new duckbill dinosaurs “de novo” on the other side of the ocean, as they were so essential for his design of humans and our food?

DAVID: I don't know Bechly's exact thinking. He believes in the designer, so that would probably mean de novo in two places. His main thrust is Darwin is totally inadequate to explain it.

Understandable, but the mystery remains unsolved. Darwin did not claim to have solved all the mysteries - he devoted a whole chapter to "Difficulties on theory" - but individual anomalies do not invalidate the main thrust of his theory, which is common descent, with natural selection determining which organs and organisms survive.

The brain: studies on memory

DAVID: This is an extraordinary paper as it describes a brain as an organ that runs its own show. It actually decides what to record with what degree of importance to ascribe to it!!

dhw: The brain is a community of cell communities, and so this means that the cells actually run their own show and actually decide what to record etc. If brain cells run this show and make decisions, perhaps you will acknowledge that other cells (whose autonomous intelligence was possibly designed by your God) might do the same?

DAVID: God instructs cells how to react in instructions in DNA.

dhw: Your God has planted instructions in every cell for every reaction to every new situation, has he?

DAVID: No, some minor adaptations occur without God.

An organ that “runs its own show” and “decides what do record and what degree of importance to attach to it” is not a “minor adaptation”.

Moths fake out bats

DAVID: again, it raises the question of adaption by design or by incremental steps of natural evolution. The level of complexity in acoustic science is obvious to us, but at the moth level I think they had designer help.

You simply cannot bear the thought that all forms of life might have the intelligence to work out their own ways of survival.