More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, October 25, 2024, 13:09 (27 days ago) @ David Turell

Cancer and cellular autonomy

DAVID: Cancer results from mistakes in DNA. This allows them freedom to misuse God's instructions in rebellious ways. That they use the instructions allows researchers to explore how DNA is used in normal cells. God does not give them autonomy. It comes from mistakes in DNA copying or mutations.

So when you wrote that “cancer cells act autonomously as rebels”, did you mean that God programmed them so that we could learn how to correct the mistakes in his design? Or did you mean that he gave them the autonomous freedom to rebel – for the same reason?

Sponges collect molybdenum (leading to ecosystem importance)

DAVID: You miss the entire concept of ecosystems providing what humans need.

dhw: Were the extremophiles, the weaverbird’s nest, the sponges etc. all specially designed to provide us with our needs?

DAVID: No, but to support their individual ecosystems which interlock with all other systems to satisfy the huge human population.

I’ve no idea how every single extinct pre-human ecosystem could have satisfied us, or even how we are “satisfied” by the extremophiles, nest and sponges. As far as I’m aware, ecosystems have come and gone, along with the organisms that made and depended on them. And I suspect that if weaverbirds were to go extinct, somehow we would struggle along even without their nests.

dhw: A possibly purposeless God who purposefully creates humans, who probably/possibly has human thought patterns but is not human in any way, who may want to be worshipped but can’t want to be worshipped because he is selfless, but possibly can want to be worshipped because all our proposals are possible, and who may have designed the weaverbird’s nest for no reason at all but designed it because along with millions of other natural wonders it provides us with what we need……Yes, I find it all confusing.

DAVID: When one thinks about God all of those possibilities exist. What you pick and choose obviously is nothing like my choices.

They are all your choices and your contradictions. I haven’t even mentioned any of my alternatives.

Giant impact 3.2 bya

QUOTE: (Re Chixculub) "Even that devastating impact – the only meteorite we've confidently linked to an extinction event – opened new avenues for life to thrive. With the decline of the non-avian dinosaurs, mammals rose to fill the vacated ecological niches; without that devastation, it's possible that humanity would never have emerged.”

dhw: This confirms the point that evolution proceeds in phases, and the example […] illustrates how new conditions enable the survivors of each phase to flourish (the 0.1% who create what David calls the ”continuum”). Raup says it was all luck, and Stephen Jay Gould reckoned that if evolution was rerun, it would have produced different results because so much depended on chance. […] If David’s theory of evolution is correct, and humans were the goal from the very beginning, this really does seem a very roundabout way for an omnipotent God to achieve his goal.

DAVID: My point also. The Cambrian shows God can create directly.

Yes, the Cambrian is one of your shots in the foot. If your purposeful God was capable of direct creation and his sole purpose was us, why the preliminary 3.X billion years’ worth of irrelevant designs? Your answer: God is an inefficient designer. My alternative proposal: if he exists, God may have had other purposes.

Theoretical origin of life: deep ocean vents extremophiles

QUOTE:'To our knowledge, it is the first time that animal life has been discovered in the ocean crust…”

dhw[…] The whole history of life on Earth – whether there is a God or not – suggests that it has been one colossal free-for-all, with interaction between cellular intelligence (possibly designed by a God) and the environment as the driving force.

DAVID: Environment drives nothing but creates a need for an adaptation. We see minor adaptations now. Only in the past was true speciation.

Has it never occurred to you that “need” is a driving force? Or that changing conditions might offer opportunities for innovation? We know speciation has stopped for now. That is why we can only theorize about how and why it happened. But if organisms have the autonomous ability to change their structures adaptively, it is not unreasonable to suppose that past conditions also allowed them to change their structures innovatively. You seem to consider this to be impossible, but are happy to embrace the theory that 3.8 billion years ago an unknown mind preprogrammed - or alternatively dabbled ad hoc - every innovation and possibly every environmental change.

Introducing the brain: cleaning out lipids

QUOTE: "Dementia is a complex condition involving a wide range of biological pathways, of which so few are understood. But the more researchers learn about the brain's typical functions, the closer we get to understanding the stubbornly incomprehensible diseases associated with them too."

DAVID: It is not likely this system developed by chance. More evidence for design.

These two comments combined are not exactly complimentary to the designer. But we can still marvel at the complexities of the brain and the perseverance of humans in their efforts to correct the problems caused by the faulty design.