New Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Monday, February 03, 2025, 18:12 (31 days ago) @ dhw

First life

DAVID: The criteria is belief in God.

dhw: Of course it’s not. I might just as well ask why your all-knowing, all-powerful God took so LONG to develop life. Just as I can ask why your all-knowing, all-powerful God took so long and designed so many irrelevant species and ecosystems if his one and only purpose was to design us and our food.

Your usual total distortion of the history of evolution. All that evolved is here today for our use.

T-cells and immunity

QUOTE: "'We discovered that ID3+ T cell formation could be promoted by specific inflammatory cues, potentially offering new strategies to boost the number of immune cells that excel at fighting cancer in patients..."

DAVID: a necessary fighter in the immune system, allowing for a long term resistance. It demonstrates 'purpose' as do all evolutionary processes like it. It supports a designer theory.

DAVID: from our cancer society: in a nation of over 300 million about 600,000 will die this year of cancer. Where are dhw's millions? Let's see support.

dhw: You always seem to forget that your nation is not the only nation in the world. The 600,000 cases of God’s failed instructions are enough in themselves to prove the appalling inefficiency of your God’s so-called "instructions". As for the world, try this for size:

The American Cancer Society released its Global Cancer Statistics, 2024, report which estimates that approximately 20 million new cases of cancer were diagnosed in 2022 and approximately 9.7 million individuals died from cancer during that time. Moreover, the number of global cancer cases is predicted to reach 35 million by 2050.

I prefer a reasonable view: In 2050 when the Earth's population will be 10 billion+ of course the total will increase. Current death rate: 0.00000032% of Total Earth population.

Theistic evolution vs. Darwinism: design evidence

DAVID: Back to a first cause discussion?

dhw: Precisely. And each possible first cause (God versus a mindless mass of ever changing matter and energy) raises unanswerable questions. Now please tell us why you think your all-powerful God was incapable of designing cells clever enough to do their own designing.

DAVID: Compare your brain to that of a living cell. Which one can see design and perform it.

dhw: I don’t understand your second sentence: It means Brain vs. single cell

dhw: I trust you have now realized that Darwinism is not atheistic.

Agnostic, I know.

Extremophiles

DAVID: another study that demonstrates the tenacity of life. It is ecosystems all the way down. In a universe fine-tuned for life, the outcome is not surprising.

dhw: Yes, we’ve seen several articles on this subject. I don’t know about the universe being fine-tuned for life, since ours is the only planet we know that actually hosts it, but my response is different from yours, as I find all the diversity simply astonishing. In the context of your theory of evolution, I would say this astonishing diversity supports the concept of a massive free-for-all (perhaps initiated by a designer God), as cells and cell communities seek to survive in all sorts of environments. I have no idea why your God would want to create so many different ecosystems all the way down and all the billions of years back, solely in order to design and provide for us humans. But of course, you have no idea either.

No, I don't. Have you forgotten all the fine-tuning philosophy?