More Miscellany: Bechly reappears (General)

by David Turell , Tuesday, May 28, 2024, 18:44 (29 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Tuesday, May 28, 2024, 18:50

ID science>

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: All Shapiro showed was bacteria can edit their DNA. His theory is an extrapolation of that fact.

dhw: Most theories are extrapolations from known facts – if they had no factual basis, nobody would take them seriously. The theory of cellular intelligence has been endorsed by growing numbers of scientists from other fields. Please don’t pretend that it cannot be regarded as an alternative to chance and separate creation by God.

It is an unproven alternative. Everyone acknowledges cells act as if intelligent in what they currently do. Planning a very new adaptation requires more intelligence than they show.

Duckbill dinosaurs and trans-oceanic dispersal

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: A designer building forward from changes to past forms will create a common descent pattern.

dhw: Yes indeed. And Darwin emphasized that his theory should not “shock the religious feelings of anyone”. Thank you for once more endorsing the theory of common descent.

My form is not your form.

The brain: studies on memory

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.

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

DAVID: That is a God design, not a minor adaptation.

dhw: An organism which, in your own words, “runs its own show” and “decides what to record” etc. works autonomously. God may have given it this autonomous ability, but that does not mean that its “show” and its decisions are preprogrammed by instructions.

That is exactly what it can mean.

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.

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

DAVID: When well designed by God they survive beautifully.

dhw: So were the 99.9% of extinct species not designed or badly designed by your God?

Again, your distorted view of the pattern-method of evolution. It requires extinctions.