New Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Saturday, February 01, 2025, 08:29 (33 days ago) @ David Turell

First life

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

You have again omitted your own agreement:

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

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.

DAVID: 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.

I know what you and the article’s author express, and I’m pointing out to you that you have absolutely no idea how long life normally takes to appear, and so it is totally pointless for him and you to tell us that 70,000,000 years (or 40,000,000 years) is a surprisingly short time!

T-cells help gut immunity

You digressed with a misleading reference to Raup. Our subject was your belief that cells automatically follow your God’s 3.8-billion-year old instructions for every new situation. I pointed out that every failure (extinction) must therefore be an example of your God’s inefficiency, whereas:
dhw: […]If he deliberately gave organisms autonomy, their extinction would be due to THEIR inefficiency, and not his.

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

What do you mean by a “degree of adaptability” if it’s not a degree of intelligence to organize themselves and make decisions independently of his instructions?

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.

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

For 3.X thousand million years , ecosystems came and went, and there were no humans on the scene! So how can they have “evolved with human evolving”? You’re back where you started, with your God’s nonsensical method of fulfilling the only purpose you allow him to have: producing us and our food.

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 […] 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: […] We both agree chance mutations don't work. I didn't mention atheism.

“Theistic evolution versus Darwinism” implies that Darwinism is atheistic. But if all you wanted to do was point out that chance mutations don’t work, then you are flogging a horse which died 17 years ago, because I have always agreed with you. So what is it that "dhw doesn't understand"?

DAVID: [Darwin] 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.

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

As humans are proving day by day, designers can design mechanisms capable of extraordinary feats. Why do you think your all-powerful, all-knowing God was incapable of designing minds clever enough to do their own designing? I can also hear the atheists cry: "How come clever cells need a designer, but a designer clever enough to design such cells does not need a designer?"

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.

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

The seeds of life must have been present before they combined to make life, whether it was designed or not. What are you answering?

Return to David's theory of evolution III

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.”

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

So why did you put it under the heading “Return to David’s Theory of Evolution III”?