More miscellany (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 07, 2024, 18:49 (106 days ago) @ dhw

God’s imperfect system.

DAVID: Any evolutionary process REQUIRES culling.

dhw: 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.

Ah, your worshiped double standards. Does any evolutionary process require culling or not? My only point.

Biochemical controls (99.9% versus 0.1%).

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

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

Where did that come from? 99% produced the existing 0.1%

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.

dhw: 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.

Your blunder is wanting 100.1%. The culled 99.9% are the ancestors of the current living 0.1%, as a general summary of Raup's statistics.

Earliest L-forms

DAVID: We have discussed the imperfections.

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

Your explanations reduce God to a human form of mind.

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.

Fair enough.

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.

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

We have discussed the need for a first source. One exists, obviously. I accept the one that can think and design.