More miscellany (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, July 18, 2024, 19:29 (126 days ago) @ dhw

Schizophrenia

dhw: Your two-way approach leads you to tell us that your God is benevolent but is not benevolent, may want us to worship him but doesn’t, may enjoy creating but doesn’t, probably has human attributes but doesn’t. Not schizophrenic?

God has one personality. My view of Him is in two ways does not make Him schizophrenic

Back to David’s theory of evolution

DAVID: Your usual distorted view of any evolutionary process which requires culling.

dhw: How many evolutions of life do you know of?

DAVID: The one we both know.

dhw: So please stop talking about “any evolutionary process”. Your God invented a system which, according to you, required designing and then culling 99.9 out of 100 species because they were irrelevant to the purpose you impose on him. What have I distorted?

DAVID: Culling is a required part of any evolution. 'Not irrelevant' is the distortion!!!!

dhw: You have just agreed there is only one evolution, and if your God is the first cause, who decided that the only way to create humans plus food was to create and then cull 99.9 out of 100 species because they had no connection with humans plus food? He did, incomprehensibly, which is why you keep ridiculing him as imperfect; cumbersome and inefficient, though your other self insists that he is perfect.

Yes, there is only one evolution of life, but evolutionary design processes exist in many ways and cull what is not wanted when reviewed.

Genome complexity

DAVID: The cells follow information/directions in the genome. They appear intelligent because their directions are intelligently designed.

dhw: Yet more obfuscation.You have simply changed “instructions” to “information/ directions”. Now please answer my bolded question.

DAVID: Answered! Cells are directed in their actions.

Please confirm: do you think your God has given cells precise instructions on what to do in whatever situations may arise for the rest of time? Yes or no will do.

Yes!!!

How we got water

DAVID: Hydrogen and oxygen were among the earliest elements formed. And combined as H2O they create a miracle liquid which is found all over the universe. It is 70% of our surface. Our supply suggests the Earth was especially designed for life to appear.

dhw: And the rest of the universe was especially designed for life not to appear?

DAVID: Water is just one of many requirements for life.

dhw: Agreed. You said our water supply suggests the Earth was especially designed for life to appear. Does that mean your God specially designed the rest of the universe for life not to appear?

My guess is yes. See: https://evolutionnews.org/2024/07/on-natural-theology-and-natural-revelation/

"Looking up at the external universe in all its terrifying infinity and sterility it would be all too tempting to agree with philosopher Bertrand Russell, his self-confessed disciple Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and others of like mind that the whole extra-terrestrial realm is little but a meaningless chaos where chance alone reigns supreme. Yet the nihilist sense of our having been involuntarily flung into the midst of some unchoreographed theater of the absurd is swiftly offset by observing the habitable zone of our own planet whose superabundance of vibrant life forms unarguably makes it a place of cosmic exceptionalism (albeit for reasons which might remain eternally debatable!).

***

"That characterization of natural selection has now become something of an idée reçue even though Sir Charles Lyell had warned Darwin (in company later with Alfred Russel Wallace) as early as 1860 that there was no such thing as natural selection, only natural preservation. Darwin’s ostensibly astounding discovery was in reality a misleading misnomer: it was not a discriminating force." [a book review worth reading]]

Biochemical controls

DAVID: The ancestors of these forms that were culled out in their development are part of the same 99.9% dhw always considers unnecessary.

dhw: Of course the ancestors of living forms were necessary! Otherwise the living forms would not be here! But the ancestors of living forms are part of the 0.1% that survived the culling and eventually evolved into the current forms, as you have agreed, and as I keep repeating ad nauseam:

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

dhw; We were talking then of current species, but of course we do not count bacteria as food. I don’t know if the generally accepted figure of 99.9% extinction also applies to bacteria. Our example was dinosaurs, of which only four species out of 700 were ancestors of living forms.

The 0.1% surviving came from the 99.9% culled