New Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Friday, January 31, 2025, 17:28 (34 days ago) @ dhw

LUCA

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

dhw: 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.

We are discussing a time frame for first life. The article expresses surprise it is so small, representing an underlying belief the arrival of life should have taken longer.

T-cells help gut immunity

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

dhw: 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.

God gave all organisms a degree of adaptability.to use. That is what fails. No issue of inefficiency.

NEW EXTREMOPHILES

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

dhw: 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.

All ecosystems evolve along with human evolving. You have no point.

Theistic evolution vs. Darwinism: design evidence

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

dhw: 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.

Lots of blather. We both agree chance mutations don't work. I didn't mention atheism.

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

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

A proper designer would have needed seeds-of-life in place before designing life itself.!

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

dhw: 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.

Cells with minds equal to God. A totally improbable interpretation.

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.

dhw: 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.”

The article's point was only about the end of evolution, nothing more. Stop beating on my theory when it isn't present.