New Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, February 04, 2025, 08:35 (30 days ago) @ David Turell

First life

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

I pointed out to you that since ours is the only life we know, you have no criteria for assuming that 70,000,000 (or even 40,000,000) years are a short time for life to appear.

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.

You have completely ignored this obvious point.

dhw: 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.

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

Your usual astonishing disortion of the history of evolutiion: has nobody ever told you that approximately 99% of what evolved is NOT here today? Only approximately 1% of what evolved is here today. And even the fact that we are able to use whatever is here today does not mean that whatever is here today was specially designed for us to use!

T-cells and immunity

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.

You keep telling us that the cells follow your God’s 3.8-billion-year-old instructions. I pointed out that in that case, the millions of deaths from cancer must be God’s failures – yet another example of the inefficiency of the God you believe in.

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."

DAVID: 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.

You asked me where were my millions, and I have told you. Cancer is only one of the diseases that kill us, and so there are many more million examples of your God’s instructions proving inadequate. Please give us your own explanation for the failure of your God’s instructions, if it is not inefficiency.

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:

DAVID: It means Brain vs. single cell

I have pointed out that the brain is a community of cell communities, all of which cooperate with one another. If your God gave our brain cells autonomy, why do you think he was incapable of giving autonomy to all cells?

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

DAVID: Agnostic, I know.

That’s progress.

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: I don’t know about the universe being fine-tuned for life, since ours is the only planet we know that actually hosts it. […] 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.

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

Considering that approximately 95% of the universe is unknown to us, and the only life we actually know of us is ours, I think it’s a bit premature to say that the whole universe is fine-tuned for life. And we needn’t dwell on your absurd belief that every species and ecosystem for the first 3.X000,000,000 years of life’s history was specially designed for the sake of the humans who were not even around at the time.