More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 31, 2024, 21:08 (16 days ago) @ dhw

The universe

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

dhw: 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?

Stop repeating. The Big Bang created a universe with standard characteristics fine-tuned for life. You are parroting the multiverse theory of different regions.

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

dhw: 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.

He culled nothing. Everything extant is here to serve us humans.

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.

dhw: 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 means 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.

True, a very conceptual 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.

dhw: 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?

No, birds produce programmed nests identifying species.