More miscellany (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, August 07, 2024, 09:11 (106 days ago) @ David Turell

God’s imperfect system.
DAVID: Your God has no resemblance to mine. You are trying to make my God human. You can't. No double standards. I fully reject yours.

dhw: You tried to explain the imperfection of your God’s method of evolution by telling us that all evolutions require a process of “culling” as shown by human “trial and error”. It was you who equated your God’s method with human methods, and yet you constantly reject my alternative theories because they “humanize” your God. Double standards.

DAVID: Any evolutionary process REQUIRES culling.

There is only one known evolutionary process that has led to life and speciation. You have tried to equate it with human inventions, thereby “humanizing” your God’s method into one of inefficient trial and error, although you accuse me of “humanizing” God whenever I propose alternative explanations for the “culling”. Double standards.

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 0.1% surviving.

In case you haven‘t understood yourself, that means that 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived were NOT the ancestors of the living.

DAVID: Nutty. The 99.9% created the 0.1%!!!

How can the 99.9% have created the 0.1% if the 0.1% were NOT directly descended from them???

QUOTE: Shortly after an asteroid slammed into Earth….life for non-avian dinosaurs ended, but the evolutionary story for the early ancestors of birds began.

DAVID: 696 dinosaurs became over 10,000 bird species!!!!

dhw: LIFE FOR NON AVIAN DINOSAURS ENDED. Those were the 696 species. Only 4 species of avian dinosaurs evolved into 10,000 bird species. Your schizophrenic self is now trying to turn mathematics on its head. Please take a grip.

I can hardly blame you for trying to ignore this second example of your absurd maths, but since you continue to contradict yourself, I shall continue to attack the Mr Hyde in you which refuses to acknowledge even the most obvious of blunders.

Earliest L-forms
DAVID: it is clear life appeared very early on Earth; despite the fact the early Earth was not really prepared for life to survive. This suggests to me a designer God pushing life development ahead as fast as He could.

dhw: It suggests to me that if there is a designer, he was experimenting, and learning as he went along.

DAVID: Yes, a dumb God who doesn't know what He is doing. Downgrading God as usual.

dhw: It is usually you who downgrade God by ridiculing his method of evolution as messy and inefficient. If life kept appearing and disappearing because early Earth was not really ready for it to survive, how does that come to mean that your God was in perfect control of a perfect method?

DAVID: We have discussed the imperfections.

But your schizophrenic self still insists that the imperfections denote perfection, and still refuses to consider alternative explanations.

Origin of life

DAVID: God is not inefficient, His evolutionary method appears to be. Quite a difference in interpretation from a so-called balanced agnostic!

dhw: It is YOU who keep ridiculing it as inefficient, because you insist on burdening him with your version of his purpose (us and our contemporaries) and a method which produced and demanded the culling of 99.9% of species that were irrelevant to his purpose. The free-for-all and experimentation theories would both explain the comings and goings without the ridicule.

DAVID: Insistence on a humanized God as usual.

(Dr Jekyll: "It is possible he reflects us in some ways." Mr Hyde: "God is never human in any way.") ) I still have no idea why you consider your inefficient blunderer to be more godlike than a God who enjoys making new discoveries (experimenting) or who directly achieves his purpose (a free-for-all). Your Dr Jekyll believes God enjoys creating, and he also accepts God’s willingness to give up control (human free will)

Plant intelligence
QUOTE: Trewavas accordingly defines plant intelligence as ‘adaptively variable behaviour during the lifetime of the individual’.

dhw: All the arguments in favour of plant intelligence apply to cellular intelligence as well. According to Shapiro: “Living cells and organisms are cognitive (sentient) entities that act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth and proliferation.” Clearly his theory is gaining ground.

I’ll leave this in, as it is such an important and feasible explanation of the history of evolution, whether God exists or not.

Origin of life

QUOTE: "The origins of life remain a major mystery. How were complex molecules able to form and remain intact for prolonged periods without disintegrating?”

DAVID: Same old, same old. All of this work starts with preformed molecules off the shelf. It thus completely bypasses the ultimate question how did any biochemical molecules form on a hot rocky planet?

dhw: Yep, we are all in agreement. The origins of life remain a major mystery.

DAVID: That God did it is a reasonable theory.

Agreed, but it shifts the mystery to that of how a conscious, all-powerful mind can simply have “been” there forever, without a source.