New Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 29, 2025, 10:48 (1 day, 11 hours, 35 min. ago) @ David Turell

LUCA

QUOTE: The inferred age suggests that the process required a surprisingly short interval of geologic time.

DAVID: The striking point is how quickly life appeared after the Earth formed. Strongly supports the concept of a designer at work.

dhw: We have no criteria by which to judge what constitutes a short or a long period of formation, since the only formation of life we know about is our own! If your figures (and mine) are correct, it took 40,000,000 years for life to appear. Short in comparison to what?

DAVID: In comparison to 13.78 billion years from the Big Bang. 40 million is the point of its appearance from an unknown time of its start. Your complaint is weird. The article is accepted science.

dhw: You just don’t or won’t see the point. Your 13.78 billion years are totally irrelevant, since I’m sure even you will agree that life cannot start on a planet that doesn’t exist. I am not disputing the accepted science. I am disputing your claim that 40 million years is a surprisingly short time (and therefore proof of design) for life to appear. You cannot know how long it normally takes for life to appear if the only example of life that you know of is ours.

DAVID: We know life appeared in a 40 million year period. Of course we don't know what time life took to do this, the point is it appeared in the 40 million year period which seems short for such a complex development.

All we can is that is the time it took, whether there’s a God or not. We have absolutely no idea how long the development of life ought to take, but 40,000,000 years “seems” pretty long to me. This sort of conjecture is totally worthless since we have nothing to compare with the development of life on Earth.

T-cells help gut immunity

DAVID: The cell communities are programmed to do that communication.

dhw: What is the “programme”? One might say that they are “programmed” to communicate, just as we are: i.e. they were given the intelligence and means with which to communicate, but what they communicate and what decisions they take are the product of that autonomous intelligence. Or do you really believe they have all been programmed with every single message they give and receive, and with every decision they take in response to every situation they will meet for the whole history of life?

DAVID: All cell reactions are programmed.

dhw: Just to confirm: you believe that, for instance, when a new virus attacks the immune system, your God either steps in personally to show the immune cells what to do, or 3.8 billion years ago he provided the first cells with a programme which all subsequent cells would automatically switch on, automatically choosing the correct response to the new virus – except of course when they fail to do so (i.e. when the new virus proves to be cleverer than God’s programme).

DAVID: The 3.8 byo program is the one I think works.

You often use the expression “just-so stories”, and we sometimes refer to Occam’s razor (the simplest explanation is the most likely). If God exists, I’d have thought the simplest explanation for every decision made by every cell and cell community in every situation for every species throughout the whole of life’s history was that God had given them all the ability to take their own decisions. I would label a 3.8 byo set of instructions for every single decision by every cell/cell community for every situation for the whole of life’s history a just-so story.