More miscellany (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, July 28, 2024, 07:30 (116 days ago) @ David Turell

Back to David’s theory of evolution

DAVID: I never said we produce imperfect products by evolutionary designs!

dhw: You have said your God’s designs are imperfect and inefficient, and “culling” is part of any evolution, citing human inventions as your example. “Much is trial and error […].”

A glaring example of “humanization” which you used in order to demonstrate that your God’s inefficiency was due to some obscure rule governing all evolutions.

DAVID: If God chose it, it was the proper way to do it.

So the “proper” way was imperfect, cumbersome, messy and inefficient because your God is schizophrenic.

Biochemical controls (99.9% versus 0.1%).

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.

You continue to ignore this agreement! Why?

DAVID: The 0.1% have to descend from the 99.9%. The process of Evolution must add up to 100%. […] The 0.1% are living now […]. Your nutty math: 99.9% gone + 0.1% surviving as ancestors + 0.1% now living =s 100.1%.

Once more: the 99.9% (approx.) of extinct species INCLUDE our extinct ancestors. The 0.1% are the modern survivors, some of whose ancestors are extinct. For example, out of 696 dinosaur species, only 4 either left descendants or have actually survived themselves (e.g. perhaps ostriches, emus and kiwis). Let’s say two are extinct, and two have survived. The two survivors and the two with extinct ancestors make up the 0.1% of present species that are linked to past. That means current species have survived or evolved from 0.57% of those that once lived (we’re taking Raup’s figures as a rough guide). The current 0.1% are NOT descended from the 99.9% that ever lived, but only from the 0.1% of survivors, as you have agreed.

DAVID: […] the dinos are a tiny segment, not any real example of evolution.

Then please explain how your bolded statement can mean that we are descended from the 99.9% and not the 0.1%, although we are descended from the 0.1% and not the 99.9%. Schizophrenic maths?

Symbiosis and theodicy

dhw: Why would your God want us to learn to use our brains? Once upon a time, you suggested he might have wanted us to recognize his works and worship him. Remember? And you've agreed that he would not have enjoyed watching us if he already knew what was coming (= enjoyment as a purpose). Any other possibilities?

DAVID: Still all guesswork. We do not know for sure any human attributes God has.

Long since agreed. But I’d have thought anyone who believes in a God who wanted to create us, would also want to know why. You suggested the above reasons/guesses. Any other human attributes you think might have driven him?

killfish

QUOTE: "It has long been observed that organisms modify their traits, including reproductive patterns, in response to changes in their environment.

DAVID […] More than likely these instincts are designed. […]

dhw: .[..] Unthinking, automatic instinct requires no thought-processing or decision-making. Why would the absence of such abilities be more likely to come up with solutions? Or are you back with your 3.8 billion-year-old book of instructions […], or your God popping in to teach organisms the solution every time they have a problem?

DAVID: Yes, they may follow God's instructions.

dhw: Passed down through 3.8 billion years, but “instinctively” they pick the right one? Or God keeps popping in.

DAVID: No, instructions designed at their inception.

So your God designs each individual species with solutions to all problems, e.g. what to do when he designs other species specially to gobble the first one up. Sounds as if he’s playing games with himself.

Multicellularity

QUOTES: By working together as a collective, the algae could preserve their mobility.

Clearly, whatever changes they underwent to survive at high viscosity were hard to reverse, Simpson said — perhaps a move toward evolution rather than a short-term shift.

dhw: A perfect example of how evolution may have worked in general: by combining, cells form new communities which perform different tasks and, having been successful, they remain fixed. The more communities that bind together, the greater the range of activities and capabilities and novelties – hence the origin of species, as proposed by Shapiro.

The role of dGRNs

The article presents the case for ID against chance mutations. We have agreed on this for the last 16 years. The article makes no mention of ID via Shapiro’s perhaps God-given cellular intelligence. Why not?

How children pick up a language

QUOTE: How much of their communication do babies owe to nature versus nurture?

In my view, the above question rightly casts doubt on the rest of the article. Feral children don’t “speak” the language of their human mothers, or make sounds heard in the womb. They may even be unable to form those sounds. Our languages would have evolved from the sounds made by our fellow mammals, and our vocal apparatus has come from those ancestors who laid the foundations of our human languages, but our vocabulary and syntax have to be learned from the beginning. Babies do not emerge from the womb with a single word, let alone a sentence.