More Miscellany: Bechly reappears (General)

by dhw, Sunday, June 16, 2024, 08:55 (158 days ago) @ David Turell

Plant responses to predators

QUOTE: "In a fascinating and contentious new paper, Andre Kessler, a chemical ecologist at Cornell University, and his doctoral student, Michael Mueller, argue that the behavior of some plants can fit into a certain definition of intelligence".

DAVID: this is either a naturally developed defense mechanism or an intelligently designed system. dhw will pick the former.

dhw: I’m delighted to see that here you are no longer denying the concept of cellular intelligence. [...] I have always qualified my support for this theory by acknowledging that cellular intelligence may or may not have been designed by your God – depending on whether he actually exists.

DAVID: Delighted you are delighted.

And you will continue to delight me by not contradicting yourself in future posts.

Oxidation

dhw: If there is a God, I can’t help feeling that all this teeter tottering is far more redolent of experimentation than of a precise knowledge of what is required for the fulfilment of a single purpose. Wouldn’t you agree?

DAVID: No, I would call it a designer adjusting.

dhw: So despite his omnipotence and omniscience, you believe he has to keep making changes as he goes along. What does he adjust to? Sounds more like experimentation than knowledge of exactly what is required, don’t you think?

DAVID: God does not control each cyanobacterium at work.

dhw: We are talking about the vast number of environmental “teeter totterings” described in the article, each of which – according to your theory – would have meant your God “adjusting” in his efforts to fulfil his one and only purpose. […] Does all this really sound like an omniscient, omnipotent mind that knows right from the start exactly what it wants and exactly how to get it?

DAVID: Remember, not everything is directly created. God uses evolving processes.

Do you think all the “teeter totterings” of environmental conditions such as oxidation, which dictated what species could/couldn’t survive, were deliberately designed by him so that he could create and then cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had nothing to do with his one and only purpose, or that he had to “adjust” to them because they were beyond his control?

bacteria use bacteriophages in warfare (now “overblown Darwin-speak”)

QUOTE: ...evolution has maintained the diversity of tailocin variants over the century-scale."

dhw: I’m surprised you haven’t objected vehemently to this statement about evolution as "phony, overblown Darwin speak propaganda."

DAVID: I discriminate my responses. You are so steeped in old Darwin, you don't recognize Darwin-speak. This article is fine.

dhw: Both articles are fine, according to you, but you object to the title “evolution repeats itself” as "phony, overblown Darwin-speak propaganda”, because “true use of the word evolution requires speciation”, and yet you accept the statement that “evolution has maintained the diversity of tailocin variants”, which focuses purely on bacterial warfare and not on speciation. You are so steeped in your hatred of Darwin, you can’t even see that “evolution repeats itself” is a perfectly straightforward observation of what has happened in the course of evolution, as is the second example of the word’s usage.

DAVID: I'm glad you vented your rage. You still don't understand I rage against Darwinists misuse of words and his theory, not himself.

There is no “rage”. I am calmly pointing out that the statement “evolution repeats itself”, just like the statement “evolution maintains the diversity of tailocin variants”, simply states what happens in the course of evolution. I see no reason why you should vent your anti-Darwinist rage by describing a straightforward statement of fact as “phony, overblown Darwin-speak propaganda.” Nor do I accept the word “undefendable” in your statement that “Darwinists constantly defend his undefendable theory”, which I would regard as “overblown anti-Darwin-speak propaganda”, since even you accept the theories of common descent and of nature selecting those organs/organisms that are useful in the “warfare” for survival.

Our heart differs from that of the great apes

QUOTE: "A human's larger brain and greater physical activity compared to other great apes can also be linked to higher metabolic demand, which requires a heart that can pump a greater volume of blood to the body."

DAVID: we were different in design from the beginning. Our heart was built to meet the demands of high-speed running.

dhw: Or perhaps the demands of high speed running led to an increase in heart size, just as the demands of living in the sea would have led to whale flippers replacing pre-whale legs.

DAVID: Chicken and egg problem: one cannot run at high speed unless one has the heart for it to begin with.

So you think your God popped in and enlarged the hearts of a group of pre-sapiens with the great news that now they could run faster. I suggest that the heart and all other cell communities (organs/organisms) RESPOND to demands (and opportunities), as opposed to them being changed in ANTICIPATION of demands (and opportunities). And I suggest that this principle underlies the whole history of evolution.