New Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Friday, February 07, 2025, 13:48 (27 days ago) @ David Turell

First life

DAVID: The answer is really life is so complex and surprising, its sudden appearance is shocking. It becomes an issue of when did God start to do it.

Yes, life and evolution are both complex and surprising, especially as we know of no other life anywhere in the universe. But when the process started is NOT the issue we are discussing. The first organisms may have emerged 3.8 billion years ago or even earlier. The first “issue” is HOW it started, and the God theory is one explanation – it is not a fact. The issue you raised, however, was that 70,000,000 years (or 40,000,000 years) was a surprisingly short time for life to have developed, which you regard as evidence for the existence of your God. As we know of no other life, we have absolutely no criteria by which to judge the “normal” length of time it takes for life to appear. Your argument was totally without foundation.

Evolution

DAVID: When one realized God did it as His goal, it all makes sense.

dhw: How can it make sense if your God’s one and only goal was to design the 1% but he also designed and then disposed of 99% which had nothing to do with his goal? That is why you ridicule him as being a messy, inefficient designer!

DAVID: Wrong. I'm disturbed about God's use of evolution, not His designer ability.

If his one and only purpose was to design us and our food, but he found himself designing and then having to cull 99 out of 100 species because they had nothing to do with his one and only purpose, he was clearly an inefficient designer! Stop dodging!

T-cells and immunity

DAVID: My use of the word inefficiency applied only to His use of evolution. Don't expand its meanings to specific DNA instructions.

dhw: I have said that this is another example of his inefficiency: if millions of people die in spite of his 3.8-billion-year-old instructions, then clearly his instructions don’t always work. That = inefficiency.

DAVID: The design of life is not insufficient design. Your usual complaint has missed the reply of proportionality of side effects of His good works.

You believe that your God issued instructions for every immune response to every threat. The fact that the instructions failed in millions of cases can only mean that his instructions were inadequate. If a surgeon saves 9 patients but through his inefficiency kills one, do you congratulate him on grounds of proportionality?

The brain

DAVID: Neurons self-design following instructions.

dhw: More word games. Are you now saying that every design made by your brain cells was predetermined 3.8 billion years ago? If not, what did these “instructions” consist of?

DAVID: We know where thoughts are handled but not how neurons follow instructions to accommodate thinking.

What instructions? We are not discussing the source of consciousness, but the autonomy of organisms and their thinking. You believe we humans make our own designs and decisions without “instructions” from your God. Why do you insist that he could not possibly have given the same autonomy to other forms of life, right down to the single cell?

Fine-tuning

dhw: Nobody will deny that this portion has conditions suitable for life! That does not mean that the unknown rest of the universe is also “fine-tuned” for life.

DAVID: It is assumed so.

dhw: An assumption based on 5% and ignoring 95% leaves a lot to be desired.

DAVID: The whole 100% universe is shown in the CMB with no different areas. Fine-tuning is accepted as universal. Your thinking is oddball.

I had to look up CMB: “The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is the cooled remnant of the first light that could ever travel freely throughout the Universe. This 'fossil' radiation, the furthest that any telescope can see, was released soon after the Big Bang.”
How does this come to mean that the 95% of the universe which no telescope can see is fine-tuned for life, although we have yet to discover life anywhere else in the universe?

dhw: 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.

DAVID: We are in charge, taking everything for our use. The present tells the story of God's intent.

If God exists, the history of life makes a mockery of your conclusion, which you can only justify by ridiculing him as a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer.

DAVID: All evolutionary preparation for our arrival.

dhw: There we go again! 99% of species and ecosystems had no connection with us and our food. You have confirmed above that only 1% have evolved into the current world, but you still disagree with yourself.

DAVID: I don't slice up a continuous evolution as you do.

dhw: The continuity consists of the 1%. There is no continuity for the 99%. They went extinct. Remember?

DAVID: Yes, evolution 'extincted' them away to reach the surviving 0.1%. That's evidence of continuity.

Thank you for recognizing that the surviving 1% are the “continuity”. Every extinction by definition denotes discontinuity. You’ve got it (almost)!