More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, September 01, 2024, 11:56 (81 days ago) @ David Turell

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?

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

I have not even mentioned the multiverse. 95% of THIS universe remains a mystery. The only life we know of us is on our planet. The discussion continues with the next item:

Black holes needed for life

DAVID: every part of a galaxy has reasons to exist. dhw complains God didn't need such a large universe to make life appear for us.

What makes you think that every galaxy contains life? If you think it does, then clearly your God did not create the universe for the single purpose of creating us. If you think it doesn’t, you are left with the same problems: Why all the galaxies just for us and our food? Why the 99.9% irrelevant species, just for us and our food? You have no idea, other than to “parrot” the theory of a sourceless mind which knows what it’s doing, even if it doesn’t make sense to us. (But I will balance your blind faith against that of the atheist, who “parrots” the theory that all the complexities of life could have been assembled by sheer chance.)

Intelligent cells

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.

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

Even if your second anthropocentric theory were true (to “serve us”), what is extant represents 0.1% of what has existed, and it is you who used the expression “cull” in relation to the irrelevant 99.9% (at those times when you agreed that they were NOT our ancestors).

Gaps are very real

DAVID: According to Gould the great secret among paleontologists were the many gaps in evolution. This article shows them. De novo appearance is alive and well in evolution, not supporting Darwin at all. However, design is supported.

We have long since agreed that Darwin was wrong in his fixed belief that nature does not make jumps. There is a great deal of controversy over what environmental changes may have triggered each “explosion”, but one can hardly dismiss the theory that environmental change causes extinctions and also opens the door to new forms which will be able to exploit the new conditions. You have assumed 100% irrelevance of all pre-Cambrian forms, and the dinosaur extinction (post-Cambrian) illustrates the same process and proportion of extinction to survival. But you still oppose your own agreement that 99.9% were NOT our ancestors.

God and evolution: weaverbirds

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?

DAVID: No, birds produce programmed nests identifying species.

I see. Either your God dabbled non-stop, or 3.8 billion years ago, he programmed every single species of bird and every single “species” of nest, along with every other species, extant and extinct, every other “home”, lifestyle, strategy etc., with the sole exception of the behaviour of murderous molecules, viruses, bacteria and humans.

Weird forms in Mono Lake

QUOTES: single-celled organisms that can cluster together to form colonies and act suspiciously like multicellular lifeforms.
"Choanoflagellates are of particular interest to biologists because they're considered the closest living relative of animals that aren't themselves animals. Their colony-forming behavior could also help bridge an evolutionary gap between single-celled and multicellular organisms.”

A wonderful example of cells forming a community. As you yourself often comment: “not by chance”, since clearly their communities have been successful in the struggle for survival. The above quotes do indeed seem to bridge a gap – from intelligent individual cells to communities of intelligent individual cells.