More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, September 03, 2024, 09:01 (13 days ago) @ David Turell

Black holes needed for life

DAVID: Every galaxy does not have life, I think. All the other galaxies are there from God's desired construction. Why should everything God does make sense to us? What is obvious from studies of life's biochemistry is that a designer is necessary.

dhw: My question is not about life’s biochemistry, which I accept as an argument for design, but about the billions of presumably lifeless galaxies which you claim your God designed for the sole purpose of creating us and our food – a theory which clearly makes no sense to you and a problem which if anything supports the atheist view that, given these vast numbers, the odds are that eventually chance would provide the first primitive life forms we know.

DAVID: It makes perfect sense to me! God designed it so it had to be that way. You second guess GOD!

I don’t know if your God exists. Your design argument presents a good case for his existence. Your belief that your God designed billions of probably lifeless galaxies in order to create us and our food, though you haven’t a clue why he would do so, is not a very convincing argument for God’s existence, or for your theory about his one and only purpose.

Intelligent cells

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

dhw: 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).

DAVID: We are part of the survivors, the 0.1% which came from the 99.9% extinct. Raup's lumped statistics is my way of viewing evolution.

dhw: It was you who used the expression “cull”, and Raup does NOT say that the 99.9% were the ancestors of the 0.1%, and you have agreed that they were not. All dealt with on the “evolution” thread.

DAVID: From above please reread: "survivors, the 0.1% which came from the 99.9% extinct."

What do you mean by “came from”? A week ago you made it clear: “The 99.9% are the direct ancestors of the surviving 0.1% which are here to support a huge human population.” No they were not our direct ancestors. See the “evolution” thread.

God and evolution: weaverbirds

DAVID: All of God's good has some bad side effects.

dhw: Two separate issues here: You stand by your theory that he dabbled or preprogrammed all of the above, so no species apart from the nasty ones have ever had the intelligence to design their homes, means of self-defence, strategies for catching prey, or for surviving changing conditions. Only the murderous ones were given such autonomous intelligence.

DAVID: Makes little sense. Good and bad had the same DNA programming.

I agree that it makes little sense. That is why I suggest that the good and the bad may all have the same autonomous intelligence to work out their various ways of survival.

Weird forms in Mono Lake

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Perhaps a God-given capacity.

dhw: Yes, the theory of cellular intelligence allows for God as its designer.

DAVID: OK.

Thank you. And thank you for the further evidence of cellular intelligence you have provided below.

Bacterial intelligence? navigation and sensing

DAVID: this chemo-sensory ability is built into the bacterial DNA, which certainly makes them move intelligently.