Miscellaneous (General)

by dhw, Saturday, November 16, 2024, 13:35 (5 days ago) @ David Turell

Immunity system complexity (C elegans, and also the brain’s fractal organization)

dhw: Do you believe that 3.8 billion years ago, your God designed every response to every threat that C elegans would ever face from all invading bacteria for the rest of C elegans’ history? Ditto for all other bacterial threats to all other species. Or is it possible that he designed a mechanism by which C elegans and all other species might try to work out their own means of countering bacterial threats? (I say “try”, because we should not forget the many cases of failure, which of course would highlight the inadequacy of your omniscient God’s instructions.)

DAVID: Answered over and over. Close to 100% of all reactions automatic.

That is not what I am asking. There are countless threats. Do you believe that 3.8 billion years ago, your God provided the first cells with detailed instructions on how organs/organisms should respond to every one, and the right instructions are “automatically” switched on when the relevant threat materializes? If not, please tell us what part your God has played in designing all the responses (some of them unsuccessful) to all the threats.

A theoretical God

DAVID: Stop blaming God for choosing to evolve us.

dhw: I am not blaming God for any such thing! I am blaming you for coming up with a theory that you agree makes no sense. […]

DAVID: Early in these discussion it was you who said God should not have evolved us, but used direct creation.

I have never said any such thing. I have asked you why, if your omnipotent God’s one and only purpose was to design us, he designed and then had to cull all the species that had nothing to do with us,although you believe he can create species directly, without precursors (e.g. during the Cambrian). This is a way of questioning the purpose you impose on him. But since you insist that this is his purpose, it is you who criticise/blame him for using such an “inefficient” method.

Theoretical origin of life: Space is filled with organics

QUOTE: The Rosetta mission and others have shown just how ubiquitous organic molecules are in space, too.

dhw: I must confess I don’t understand what this “discovery” is meant to prove. If organic molecules are not living organisms, we are still back where we started as regards the origin of life. Or is this an indirect reference to some kind of panpsychism?

DAVID: No, all it means, as stated, is life was predestined.

dhw: I don’t understand that either. If anything, it means that with all the ingredients of life flying around in space, it was inevitable that one fine day they would meet and produce life. One up for atheism. But if you believe in an omnipotent, omniscient God, why all the rigmarole of billions of bits and pieces floating around for billions of years?

DAVID: You can't just let proteins fall together and get life! It takes careful design.

So why did your careful, omnipotent, omniscient designer create billions of organic molecules to float around for billions of years if all he wanted to do was stick some together in order to create us and our food? Back to square one.

Introducing the brain: consciousness as ephaptic fields

QUOTE: "This single paper could take the field of ephaptic field science from the fringes of neuroscience to the forefront. Its findings regarding the speed and pervasiveness of ephaptic field effects may presage a fundamentally new understanding of how cognition and consciousness work." (David's bold)

DAVID: the bold just above expresses my feelings. It is an impressive suggestion. I must admit it comfortably fits my underlying dualism, as a field theory not fully tied to serial synaptic connections but fitting into fields.

dhw: I don’t understand how a process that depends in the first instance on neurons can fit your dualism. We should also note that these experiments were carried out on mice – and earlier on rabbits and cats. Do you regard this as evidence that mice, rabbits and cats have souls that will live on after they die?

DAVID: The Jewish religion thinks so: Nefesh and Neshama, souls for both.

I didn’t ask about the Jewish religion. Do YOU think mice, rabbits and cats have immortal souls?