More miscellany (Evolution)

by David Turell @, Sunday, July 28, 2024, 17:14 (50 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: 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.

Evolving anything follows one rule: improvement in design over several steps.


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

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

Your usual distortions: I am schizophrenic about God, which cannot/won't make God 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%.

dhw: 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.

Same nutty math. All living now are survivors: 0.1%. They are direct descendants of the 99.9% dying in the past. 100%.

Symbiosis and theodicy

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

dhw: 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?

Human attributes do not drive God!


The role of dGRNs

dhw: 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?

ID sees no evidence of Shapiro's theory.


How children pick up a language

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

dhw: 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.

Babies come built to pick up language.


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