More Miscellany: Bechly reappears (General)

by David Turell , Monday, June 10, 2024, 16:29 (164 days ago) @ dhw

The brain: studies on memory

dhw: Why have you switched the subject to free will, which we finished with months ago? Our discussion here is the autonomy of the brain, which “runs the show” and takes its own decisions, and which may have been designed by your God. You have agreed. End of discussion.

fine.

Examples of Darwinist thinking: Insect adaptations

DAVID: Is the headline phony or not?

dhw: Of course it’s not phony. It’s a variation on the well-known saying “history repeats itself”, simply pointing out that in certain cases, species repeat the solutions to problems they’d already solved in the past. “Phony” = falsified with a view to deceit. What is false and deceitful about this plain statement of fact, confirmed by the article itself?

The headline called within species adaptations evidence of evolution! Phony Darwin speak.

Cyanobacteria

DAVID: this is one of the major Gould contingencies that led to us. For me there is an issue as to what advantage cyanobacteria gained from increasing the range of chlorophyll activity? It allowed a larger range of ecosystems. This is why I look at purpose as a driving force from a designer.

dhw: Of course purpose is a driving force for any action! That does not mean that every action in the history of evolution was driven by the one and only purpose of creating us plus food.

DAVID: Purpose is the result of mental activity. Thank you.

dhw: Obviously. How does that prove your God’s one and only purpose was to create us plus food???

Obviously. No other proof indicated.

Oxygen and the Cambrian

QUOTE: "It seems these bursts of oxygen, assisted by the worms' excavations, helped life's spectacular diversity boom on Earth."

DAVID: an interesting theory based on solid work. To be clear, oxygen allowed diversification, but was not the cause of the Cambrian Explosion or the later diversifications.

dhw: It is interesting, and I agree: an increase in oxygen won’t CAUSE speciation unless there are already species present which can use the oxygen to diversify. Or, in your theory, to enable your omnipotent and omniscient God at long, long last – after designing and culling all those irrelevant species - to create “de novo” the only species he actually wanted to create (us plus food) from the very beginning.

DAVID: Yes, God works in mysterious ways.

dhw: Ways which you describe as imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient. But you prefer your own theory to others which suggest that he accomplishes exactly what he wants to accomplish. Mysterious indeed.

You humanized version of God's actions are not worth any preference.