More Miscellany: Bechly reappears (General)

by dhw, Thursday, May 30, 2024, 13:40 (153 days ago) @ David Turell

Cellular intelligence

DAVID: 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.

dhw: If a theory was “proven”, it would become a fact. It is your belief that cells/cell communities are not intelligent enough to innovate, or even to think up a strategy like feigning death, or making loud noises in order to deter predators. Your God has to write a book of instructions, or pop in and give them all a course. Even your God’s existence is an unproven theory. Cellular intelligence is an unproven alternative to other equally unproven theories.

DAVID: Accepted. So don't tout brilliant cell committees every chance you get.

I only tout it because you never stop touting your theory that your God dabbles or preprogrammed every innovation, strategy, lifestyle etc, for the whole history of life, even down to the possum being taught how to feign death!

Duckbill dinosaurs and trans-oceanic dispersal (Theory of common descent)

DAVID: My form is not your form.

dhw: You are still accepting Darwin’s theory of common descent.

DAVID: No, mine mimics Darwin's.

I’m sure Darwin would have been pleased.

The brain: studies on memory

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.

DAVID: That is exactly what it can mean.

dhw: It runs its own show, but God runs it. It decides what to record, but God decides what it should record. Your use of language is bewildering.

DAVID: No, God built in all those plasticity mechanisms to run on their own.

I have no problem with the theory that your God may have designed autonomous cellular intelligence. It is your refusal to accept the possibility of autonomous cellular intelligence that I object to.

Moths fake out bats

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

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

dhw: So your God deliberately designed and culled 99.9 out of 100 species irrelevant to his purpose because somebody told him that’s what you have to do if you want evolution. You can’t understand the basic explanation: that evolution proceeds only through changing conditions, which result in extinctions but also in the innovations which produce new species.

DAVID: You are arguing from the position of natural evolution. I follow God-designed evolution.

As an agnostic, I don’t have a problem with the theory that there may be a God, and if there is, he designed evolution. My objection is to your invention of your God’s purpose coupled with a method of achieving that purpose which you yourself ridicule as being messy, cumbersome and inefficient.

The rest of this post is covered on the "evolution" thread.