More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, October 28, 2024, 11:22 (24 days ago) @ David Turell

Cancer and cellular autonomy

dhw: Please […] explain what you meant by “act autonomously” when you wrote that “cancer cells act autonomously”. I thought that meant they made their own decisions.

DAVID: They do using God's DNA instructions.

This is yet another of your wacky attempts to misuse language. When did “autonomy” ever mean “obeying instructions”?

Sponges collect molybdenum (leading to ecosystem importance)

DAVID: Does time's passage confuse you? Ecosystems come and go with time.

dhw: Yes indeed, and that is why I can’t understand how every ecosystem for the first 3.X billion years prior to our existence, plus current extremophiles etc., could all have been designed to satisfy our needs.

DAVID: Yes, all evolved to satisfy our current needs.

We weren’t even here for 3.X billion years. How could every organism and ecosystem have served our current needs?

Genome complexity

QUOTE: The findings might reflect how eggs adapted to different environments—fish eggs are typically fertilized outside the animal, whereas mammalian eggs are fertilized within."
DAVID: A complex of three proteins must be found by chance or the process is designed.

dhw: An egg is a cell, and the quote clearly favours deliberate adaptation by cells to their environment. Certainly not chance. A good advertisement perhaps for cellular intelligence (possibly designed by your God)?

DAVID: Yes, designed by God.

Thank you for agreeing to the possibility of cellular intelligence. We are making progress.

Privileged planet: unmelted asteroids needed

QUOTE: "[…] it shows how many things have to go right for life to develop in the first place." (David’s bold)

DAVID: the bold above is right on point. Life is here following a million (?) or more contingencies. Only design can achieve this.

dhw: But this raises the same old question: why would your first-cause, omnipotent and omniscient God have to create billions of stars and solar systems and unmelted and melted asteroids, with “a million or more contingencies”, if his one and only purpose was to create us and our food? […] your answer will be that only God knows. But you can’t see that such irrationality demands the same faith as an atheist’s belief that all the billions and millions would eventually chance to produce the right combination of “contingencies”.

DAVID: We are discussing critical contingencies, all of which require perfection. The atheist is following a pipedream.

And the atheist will no doubt ask the same old question above, which you cannot answer, and will argue that the invention of an unknown, unknowable, immaterial, first-cause conscious being with no source but simply existing forever is a pipedream.

NDE's and skeptics: Parnia's latest studies

dhw: NB I remain neutral. There are psychic experiences, including some NDEs, which defy material explanation (e.g. when otherwise inaccessible information is received and subsequently verified). I am only commenting on the arguments presented in this article.)

I shan’t repeat my criticisms of the article, as you have not disputed them.

DAVID: I have published here many examples of consciousness separating from the brain, only to return to it.

I have referred to these in my NB – they raise questions which we cannot answer. Hence my neutrality.

DAVID: The issue is can the consciousness remain separate permanently?

There are two issues. One is that of materialism versus dualism. There are countless examples of the manner in which the material brain affects the conscious self, every one of which can be cited in defence of materialism, i.e. that the brain is the SOURCE of consciousness. The debate has not been resolved, no matter how strongly you may feel about it. The question of “permanence” refers to an afterlife, in which somehow the conscious self can survive all the material factors that have contributed to its identity, and can live for ever. Either we shall know the answer when we die, or we shall never know the answer!