More Miscellany: Bechly reappears (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 05, 2024, 11:22 (21 days ago) @ David Turell

The brain: studies on memory

DAVID: No agreement. The brain's ability for plasticity is designed by God.

dhw: The expressions you used were the ability to “run the show” and to “take its own decisions”. I agree that this requires plasticity. How does this come to mean that he did NOT design the brain’s autonomous ability to run the show and take decisions?

DAVID: God designed the brains' plasticity which mimics autonomy.

So the brain “runs the show” and “takes its own decisions”, actually means that the brain doesn’t run the show and doesn’t take its own decisions, but God runs the show and takes all the decisions. It’s amazing what one can do with language.

Moths fake out bats

DAVID: [..] God chose to evolve us as the best way to do it.

dhw: But you’ve forgotten that he also chose to evolve (by which you mean design) and cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with us plus our food. So your omnipotent and omniscient God had to use an imperfect, inefficient way to do what he chose to do. And this makes sense to you, though you cannot find a single reason why he would act in such a way.

DAVID: See other thread. Adler says we cannot ever know God's reasons and it is not wise to try.

Adler says: “Divine inscrutability precludes us from ever asking the reason why God does anything.” It is therefore totally against Adler’s guidelines to announce that the one and only reason why your God designed life was to produce us and our food, and that the one and only reason why your omniscient and omnipotent God inefficiently designed 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with us and our food was that there was no better way he could do it. Stop defying your mentor.

New stromatolites

dhw: 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.

DAVID: God may design the bad luck scenarios.

dhw: Yes indeed. That would mean he designed the scenarios for a free-for-all. Scenarios for luck do not fit in with an omnipotent, omniscient God in pursuit of a single purpose!

DAVID: Not luck if by design.

If your God wanted a free-for-all, he would have designed the conditions that would lead to a free-for-all. Survival by luck (Raup) does not mean survival by design (Turell).

Examples of Darwinist thinking: Insect adaptations

DAVID:The headline is Darwin-speak! that was my point. The article itself is critical of Darwin.

dhw: I’d have thought that convergent evolution and repetition of features that enable species to deal with the same environmental conditions are a part of the evolutionary process. The headline is: “Astonishing study shows evolution really does repeat itself”. How does this = “totally overblown” Darwin-speak propaganda, when the study actually runs counter to Darwin’s theory of randomness? Your hatred of Darwin is verging on the paranoid!

DAVID: My hatred is of total misuse of Darwin.

I still don’t know why “evolution really does repeat itself” constitutes totally overblown Darwin-speak propaganda, but it’s refreshing to hear you defending Darwin against those who “misuse” him.

GIRAFFES' NECKS (LAMARCK)

QUOTE: Why do giraffes have such long necks? A study led by Penn State biologists explores how this trait might have evolved and lends new insight into this iconic question. The reigning hypothesis is that competition among males influenced neck length, but the research team found that female giraffes have proportionally longer necks than males -- suggesting that high nutritional needs of females may have driven the evolution of this trait.

My word, we are truly facing the “iconic” issues of life now. Slight muddle I detect: why do giraffes have such long necks is a different question from why do females have proportionally longer necks than male giraffes. These are surely two separate projects which should have been given separate funding. The possibility that giraffes have long necks to enable them to reach food other animals can’t reach seems very reasonable to me, although I’m not a giraffologist. As for the fact that female necks are “proportionally” longer than male necks, this is clearly part of what we now call “woke” culture. I mean, dammit, why should male giraffes have access to leaves that female giraffes can’t reach? Male giraffes have longer forelegs than females, and it is obviously far easier to stretch the neck than it is to stretch the legs. A few generations of neck-stretching to put the female on a level with the male would therefore have led to proportionally longer necks. And so the male can no longer say: “Yah boo, I got nicer leaves than you did!” Female giraffes were way ahead of their time. Nobel Prize beckoning?

Meanwhile, I am applying for a grant to investigate why human males generally have hairier chests than human females. All contributions will be gratefully received.
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