More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, August 31, 2024, 10:20 (16 days ago) @ David Turell

The universe

dhw: We don’t even know the whole universe, and we haven’t even explored all those parts of the universe that we do know. Unless every galaxy contains life, how can you claim that every galaxy is fine-tuned for life?

DAVID: Subdue your wishes. The universe is defined as fine-tuned everywhere from the Big Bang producing physical constants (at least 18+ of them).

dhw: How can anyone define the universe in terms of “everywhere” being “fine-tuned for life” when the general consensus is that about 95% of the universe is unknown to us?

DAVID: The physics of the Big Bang produced a uniform universe. We may not see 95.5% but it is the same everywhere.

How do you know that the 95% of the universe that we don’t know is finely tuned for life, even though of all the planets we do know, only a tiny minority are finely tuned for life?

Our heart differs from great apes

DAVID: Why do you constantly invoke Shapiro's theory, with its simple basis that bacteria edit their own DNA?

dhw: Please stop pretending that Shapiro’s theory is based solely on his knowledge of bacteria. You yourself have already quoted numerous websites that support the concept of intelligent cells in all forms of life. Why do you constantly invoke the theory that there is an unknowable, supernatural, sourceless being who designed life imperfectly and inefficiently for the sole purpose of producing us, and who may have human attributes but can’t have human attributes, and is all-good but is to blame for all the evils that have not been created by humans?

Your prejudice is illustrated by the next entry:

A viral bacterial defense mechanism

DAVID: Bacteria are their own defense inventors. As free-living single cells, they must have these abilities to survive. When multicellular organism appeared, a special group of cells became the immunity system and cells lost the self-editing capacity.

dhw: How do you know? You have always agreed that cellular activities LOOK intelligent (which = an autonomous self-editing capacity), but you just happen to know that although God gave this to single cells, he took it away from them when they formed communities. Please stop expressing your opinions as statements of fact.

DAVID: I can never bend to your hopeless wish for intelligent cells that can speciate.

Mine is not a wish. The theory provides a very feasible explanation for all the random comings and goings of species, while at the same time allowing for your God as the inventor of the system. But of course it contradicts YOUR wish that your God should be in total control (though not of murderous molecules, bacteria, viruses and humans) and should only have wanted to design us and our food, although he deliberately designed and then had to cull 99.9 out of 100 species irrelevant to us and our food.

The vagus nerve

DAVID: […] After seeing this arrangement can one doubt design?

dhw: As always, many thanks for yet another fascinating insight into the complexities of living things. And I agree: they can only be there by design. The wide open questions remain: what did the designing (your God? The cells themselves?) and what designed the designer(s)?

DAVID: The designer is just IS, no designer required.

dhw: Yes, that is the equivalent of an atheistic response that life just happened, no designer required. Pots and kettles.

DAVID: The average atheist thinks chance mutations will do it. Darwin is their God.

Yes, the average atheist has the same blind faith in undesigned chance as you have in an undesigned designer. Darwin, in case you’ve forgotten, was an agnostic.

Some animals name each other

QUOTE: These findings shed light on the complexities of social vocalizations among nonhuman primates and suggest that marmoset vocalizations may provide a model for understanding aspects of human language, thereby offering new insights into the evolution of social communication."

DAVID: I'll bet this is true for chimps and great apes.

I expect so. As discussed earlier, all forms of life have their own equivalent if what we call “language”. They wouldn’t survive without some meams of communication, and our own combination of sounds and gestures is a massive expansion of the means used by other animals. Only the invention of writing has created a truly original form.

God and evolution: weaverbirds

QUOTE:"The research team suggests that at least some of the differences in nest-building were passed down across generations, demonstrating transmission behavior that was not genetic in nature."

DAVID: this demonstrates that weaverbirds can create variations on programmed DNA instincts. The researchers obviously believe as I do, the nest building follows DNA programs.

I can’t help wondering why you think your God found it necessary to design these particular nests for these particular birds, though it’s nice to hear that they are intelligent enough to design their own variations. Do you think other bird species were intelligent enough to design their own nests and pass the information on to subsequent generations without your God popping the appropriate programme into their DNA?