New Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Thursday, January 30, 2025, 11:59 (10 hours, 15 minutes ago) @ David Turell

LUCA

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

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 BBBwhich seems short for such a complex development.

dhw: All we can say 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.

DAVID: The issue you muddied is after the Earth became habitable life appeared in a 40 million year period, not knowing how long the process took.

You are now twisting yourself in knots. You wrote: “There are fossils of life at 3.8 billion years ago and suggestive fossils at 4.1, with the Earth formed at 4.5.” It’s not in a vague 40 million year period if we know the age of the fossils, but life may even have taken as “long” as 70 million years to develop if the suggestive fossils are not fossils. And you still have nothing to compare it with.

T-cells help gut immunity

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: But when you put your nose into cell reactions, they all look automatic. All proteins fold automatically. All controls are invisible.

Of course most of them work automatically most of the time. If they didn’t, every cell community would be in a state of flux! Their intelligence is only manifested when new conditions require new responses: e.g. when the existing community is threatened by a new virus and so new decisions are required in order to preserve the status quo, or when a new environment 1) requires or 2) allows changes to the status quo, either through 1) adaptation or 2) innovation. For every such case, you have your God’s 3.8-billion-year-old set of instructions. I would regard autonomous intelligence as an infinitely simpler explanation (Occam’s razor), and that would also account for the vast number of failures (extinctions), which you have to attribute to your God’s inefficiency.

NEW EXTREMOPHILES

DAVID: another study of extreme life demonstrating how pliable life is, covering the Earth in every place possible.

This raises three thoughts and feelings in me. One is sheer wonderment at it all. The second is that the greater the variety of life forms and environments, the more life’s history seems to be of a vast free-for-all, regardless of whether or not there is a God who set it in motion in the first place. The third is again wonderment at our human dedication to investigating the miracles and the mysteries. It’s the reverse side of our dedication to finding new ways of killing one another, but we should still be proud of the positives!

Theistic evolution vs. Darwinism: design evidence

QUOTE: His research revealed that this protein emerged from the fusion of two protein fragments: a chromatin factor and a transcription factor.

DAVID: the ARF appeared long before required its current use. If it had a use at its appearance, none is known. If it is a de novo phenomenon, if is evidence for pure design, not Darwinian natural selection.

Two existing protein fragments fused to create something new. The first cells fused into different communities which eventually evolved into every new organ and organism. Yes, yes, the whole of life can be called evidence for design, though why your God had to specially design every extinct and extant extremophile and plant and animal if he only wanted to design us and our food must remain a mystery of your making. As for “Theistic evolution vs. Darwinism”, that is also a muddle of your own making. Darwin was an agnostic, and the theory that all species evolved from earlier species |as opposed to being created separately) should not “shock the religious feelings of anyone” (Origin). Indeed, Darwin fell over backwards in later editions of Origin to stop the nonsense that you are now spouting: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or one.” When will you realize that Darwinism is not atheistic?