More miscellany (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, July 08, 2024, 19:33 (136 days ago) @ dhw

Theodicy

DAVID: All apply as you point out. Proportionality is still the major answer.

dhw: For someone who prides himself on sticking to his own theology, you surprise me by your adherence to an answer which is not an answer. “Why would an all-good God create evil? Because there is a lot more good than evil.” His viruses killed 50 million people in 1918, but we can ignore that because lots more people survived. Wonderland logic!

It is the most authoritative answer I can find.

Plants control water in the desert

dhw: Thank you for recognizing your problem, which is the utter absurdity of trying to defend blatant contradictions in your own theories, and in opposition to alternatives. Perhaps it is time for you to open your mind.

DAVID: With two different approaches my mind is wide open.

dhw: No it isn’t. Your two “different approaches” result in a head-on collision, but you still stick to your illogical theories and reject all logical alternatives.

My two approaches mean my mind is wide open. As a believer my God is perfect. As a philosopher I recognize His warts.

Introducing the brain

QUOTE: “The planarian is thus not only the first animal to possess a brain, but may be the ancestor of the vertebrate brain.”

dhw: It’s only a theory, but planarians apparently go back 839 million years, i.e. 300 million years before the Cambrian.

DAVID: […] the planarians had a very early form so the gap to Cambrian brains is still a mighty gap.

dhw: You claimed that the brain originated in the Cambrian without precursors. The article says that there were precursors. Of course there are mighty gaps between primitive early forms and later complexities, but if planarian brains may be the ancestors of vertebrate brains, we can hardly say for sure that the vertebrate brain had no precursors!

DAVID: Reaching for straws! The real precursors are early primitive neurons, not invented in the Cambrian. The Cambrians used them to produce advanced brains. This means the Ediacaran's had neurons.

dhw: What do you mean by the “real” precursors? “Advanced” brains are not “de novo” brains. The neurons and the planarian brains were clearly precursors to the advanced brains that evolved during the Cambrian, and your statement that our brain “originated in the Cambrian Explosion without precursors” is manifestly untrue.

There were no complex brains before the Cambrian. That primitive neurons existed before them does not remove the concept of de novo creation of brains. Keep grasping at straws to remove the gap!