More Miscellany: Bechly reappears (General)

by dhw, Monday, June 03, 2024, 08:48 (23 days ago) @ David Turell

The brain: studies on memory

DAVID: It is a designed autonomy in appearance.

dhw: So instead of “God built those mechanisms to run on their own”, you actually meant: “God built those mechanisms to look as if they were running on their own, but in fact he laid out all the instructions for all their decisions 3.8 billion years ago, or he keeps popping in to give them instructions whenever they need to take a decision.” As I’ve said before, your theories change from one post to another, and ironically you dismiss Shapiro’s theory as unproven, but cling to the above as if it were a fact!

DAVID: My theories do not change. Our brain was designed by God with the attributes it demonstrates.

And the attributes it demonstrates are the ability to “run the show on its own”, and to “take its own decisions”, which = autonomy. Thank you for repeating your agreement.

Moths fake out bats

DAVID: Funny how you defend my God.

dhw: Funny how you attack your perfect, omniscient, omnipotent, all-purposeful God as being messy, cumbersome and inefficient. But you have learned to live with all your contradictions, because first you choose the God you wish for, and you can then shut your eyes to anything that doesn’t make sense.

DAVID: Only His evolutionary method is imperfect. But that He chose it makes it OK! You are ignorant of that way of thinking.

dhw: I am certainly ignorant of how anyone who believes in an omniscient, omnipotent God can also believe that his God would choose an imperfect, inefficient, messy method to achieve his one and only goal. My way of thinking is that an omniscient, omnipotent God would only do what he wanted to do, and so whatever method he invented would be perfectly suited to the purpose for which he invented it rather than being imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient. But “you are ignorant of that way of thinking”.

DAVID: You are stuck outside of theism. Of course, God thought evolution was the perfect way to create us. Our human opinion is it looks cumbersome to us. No matter how much you try, you can't outthink God.

You are stuck with a human view of theism that insults your God, and with the blinkered attitude that no other view of theism is of any consequence to you. No matter how hard you try, you cannot find a single reason why your omniscient, omnipotent God would choose an imperfect and inefficient way to achieve the single purpose you allow him to have (us and our food). I am not trying to outthink your God. I am presuming that if he exists, his actions would logically and efficiently fulfil his purpose.

Ferns attract defenders

DAVID: this adaptation shows clear purpose, which suggests design in action.

dhw: Yes it does. And by “design” you usually mean God did it. And so I will suggest that the clear purpose is survival, and the design would have been carried out through the intelligence (perhaps God-given) of the cell communities that make up the different organisms, plants as well as insects and animals.

DAVID: Your unchanged approach.

dhw: An alternative suggestion to your unchanged approach, since any readers of this will know that by “design” you mean the direct work of God.

DAVID: Yes, God the designer.

And that is why I repeat an alternative explanation.

New stromatolites

QUOTE: That oxygen initially wiped out stromatolites' competition, enabling their prominence in the Archean and early Proterozoic environment. However, as more life forms adapted their metabolism to an oxygenated atmosphere, stromatolites started to decline, popping up in the geologic record only after mass extinctions or in difficult environments.

DAVID: I had thought stromatolites were all fossils. That there living ones as a remnant of the distant past shows how tough they are.

And it shows precisely how Raup’s view of evolution works: species come and go, depending on their ability to respond to changing conditions. All by luck, as opposed to design.

Examples of Darwinist thinking: Insect adaptations

QUOTE: "Evolution is often thought of as a haphazard process acting on an assortment of traits that randomly appear through genetic variation.”

QUOTE: "Our results imply that evolution is both repeatable and complex for the same trait," Nosil and colleagues write in their published paper. (David’s bold)

DAVID: this is the usual Darwin-speak propaganda. The bold is absolutely on point. The insects have a built-in set of adaptions to fit the circumstances of their environment. The headline calling it evolution is totally overblown. Science writers Have this slant built into their thought patterns. Why? Current science is tearing down pure Darwinism.

But it’s not “Darwin-speak”. The first quote emphasizes the randomness of Darwin’s theory, whereas the article emphasizes the fact that repeated conditions will trigger the same responses, much like convergent evolution. What would originally have been an innovation in response to new conditions is repeated when similar conditions arise. There is no randomness - and in this context I would say the article contradicts that part of Darwin’s theory (as you and I do, too.)