More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, October 11, 2024, 19:19 (6 days ago) @ dhw

Cancer and cellular autonomy

dhw: So cells make their own decisions. Now you know why I drag Shapiro into the discussion.

DAVID: Only cancer!!!

dhw: I thought that was just “one of the warts that had to exist”.

The study was about cancer abilities.

Early galaxies (now back to God’s purposes for creating life)

dhw: There are no obvious purposes. You love the word “entertainment”, but the terms you used […] are “enjoyment” and “interest”.*** […] Why do you now think this is unreasonable and “humanizing”?

DAVID: Your God's desires are human desires. Can't you see that?

dhw: Why should we wish that God would enjoy creating?[/i] (Interest, I agree, could be our wish.) But you have accepted the feasibility of your other proposals, too - including his desire to be worshipped: “all my ‘earlier proposals’ still apply.” And the possibility that the Creator has endowed his creations with attributes of his own does not mean he is a human being.

DAVID: Not His attributes but His suggestions He wants entertainment and needs to have fun experimenting.

dhw: The other phrase you used was thought patterns and emotions. I think these would cover your belief that he enjoys creating, is interested in his creations, and wants to be worshipped; and they would also cover my proposals that he might like to experiment in order to achieve a particular goal or in order to learn new things and make new discoveries, as would also apply to a free-for-all. I don’t know why you always try to trivialise your own proposals and mine as “entertainment” or “fun”, or why you wish to downgrade enjoyment as “need”. But then I don’t know why you like to ridicule your God as “messy, cumbersome and inefficient” when there are possible explanations of evolution that have him doing precisely what he wants to do.

Your 'explanations' are all humanizing.

Kinesins

QUOTE: Are these differences in function a result of random haphazardness — stochastic tweaking of gene sequences to give infinitesimally small perturbations of amino acids within the motor to eventually (over billions and billions of years) produce a smorgasbord of elegant machines like the kinesin family? Many in the scientific community have faith in this hopeless Darwinian theory. Thankfully, there are a number of scientists who view the nanoscale world with wonder and are open to the idea that molecular machines reflect purpose and design.

DAVID: All constructed from amino acids in various folding patterns. dhw to the contrary, this is the proper level for discussion of cellular activity.

dhw: Your attempts to distort my approach are becoming quite outrageous. I have explicitly opposed the theory of “random haphazardness”, view the nanoscale world with as much wonder as you do, and agree that the molecular machines reflect purpose and design. The intricacy of such mechanisms is part of the case for a designing God. This does not, however, disprove the case for intelligent design by the cells themselves, which allows for your God as the designer of that intelligence.

DAVID: God provided both design and functional information in the genome.

dhw; That is your theory, which I neither accept nor reject. It doesn’t exclude the theory of cellular intelligence, and it doesn’t justify your distortion of my approach to the points under discussion.

You have distorted cellular intelligence all out of shape. The intricacies of biochemical design require the mental capacity of a thinking mind! Could mere cells do that? IMPOSSIBLE!!