New Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Friday, January 31, 2025, 14:52 (34 days ago) @ David Turell

LUCA

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

DAVID: Solid fossil evidence is at 3.8 bya. When life started is unknown so all we have is their presence at a given time. What are you arguing about?

I am arguing about the quote above and your own statement which you have omitted: “The striking point is how quickly life appeared after the Earth formed. Strongly supports the concept of a designer at work.”

It is absurd to tell us that 70 million (or 40 million) years is a surprisingly short time and proof of God’s design when you have absolutely no way of knowing what would be a “normal” time for life to appear.

T-cells help gut immunity

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

dhw: 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 […] 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.

DAVID: According to Raup all extinctions are programmed into the process. They are required.

Why bring Raup into this? He never mentions your God, and sees survival as a matter of luck. Your all-powerful and yet inefficient God designed and had to cull 99 out of 100 species for the purpose you impose on him. If he deliberately gave organisms autonomy, their extinction would be due to THEIR inefficiency, and not his.

NEW EXTREMOPHILES

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

dhw: […] 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. […]

DAVID: All diversity is organized into finely-tuned ecosystems.

And these have constantly changed throughout life’s history, which makes a mockery of your theory that they were all designed for the sake of humans.

Theistic evolution vs. Darwinism: design evidence

dhw: […]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). [...] When will you realize that Darwinism is not atheistic?

DAVID: See full answer in a new entry today.
Theistic evolution vs. Darwinism: design evidence

DAVID: From dhw who does not understand Darwinism depends totally on chance mutations, nothing organized for design.

I keep rejecting the theory of chance mutations, but that is only one part of Darwinism, the essence of which is that all organisms (except “the first few forms or one”) have developed from earlier organisms, and natural selection determines which organs and organisms will survive. These basic factors remain intact. There is clearly a link between the environment and new developments (not random), and we don’t accept that nature does not make jumps, but even the random mutations are not atheistic, because Darwin's theory does not cover the origin of life itself. He explicitly allows for God being “the Creator” of the whole system.

DAVID: An answer:
https://www.livescience.com/chemistry/asteroid-bennu-contains-the-seeds-of-life-osiris-...

The article makes no mention of God or of design. Hardly an answer.

DAVID: if I were a designer setting up the alphabet for my code controls of life, I would have them available from the beginning in the terrestrial substances. I am not attacking Darwin's degree of theism. I don't care what he believed theistically.

Then you should not use misleading headings like “Theistic evolution vs Darwinism”. Darwinism is not atheistic.

DAVID: He believed chance mutations drove evolution, seasoned by natural selection. And that mess made our brain! No way!

I agree. I find Shapiro’s theory of design by intelligent cells far more convincing. Same theory of evolution, but different interpretation of how it works.

Return to David's theory of evolution III

DAVID: I think major evolution has run its course:
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQZSsKtxVwsKCJfFFSbLkqRhzlf

QUOTE: Global study finds species are losing genetic diversity.

Again no need for me to repeat the article.

DAVID: evolution can only advance if the available DNA is rich in diversity. I don't see humans taking over the designer's job. Major evolution producing totally new families is over.

This article has nothing to do with your illogical theory about God’s purpose, method and nature, but simply deals with reasons for declining diversity. Whether we are the endpoint of evolution remains to be seen. As you agree on the “balance” thread, “nobody can possibly know what will happen a few hundred years from now.”