New Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, February 11, 2025, 13:32 (23 days ago) @ David Turell

First life

dhw: […]you think 9.2000,000,000 years is a short time for the appearance of a planet that can sustain life, and 70,000,000 (or 40,000,000) years is a short time for life to have appeared, and the shortness supports the concept of a designer. How do you know the normal time for the appearance of a life-sustaining planet and for life itself?

DAVID: The only times we know are historical. Only God knows the truth.

If he exists. I presume from this reply that you now accept that there are no criteria by which one can say the relevant periods are short or long.

Evolution

DAVID: The only goal we know is humans. Don't invent 'facts' from your mind.

dhw: It is not a “fact” that humans were his one and only goal. Your refusal to believe he might have had a different purpose, and/or used a different method for creating life and evolution’s history, including the 99 out 100 species that had no connection with us and our food, leads you to the conclusion that he is a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer.

DAVID: The bold is a deliberate distortion: He is a magnificent designer, using a messy evolution system.

If he exists, he designed your messy, inefficient evolution system. And that would make him a messy, inefficient designer.

T-cells and immunity

DAVID: Explicitly: DNA instructions make a mechanical mechanism that repeatedly identify enemy, take a protein piece and imbed it into an antibody that kills. Same event over and over. Automatically recognizing self from not-self'.

dhw: So every enemy is identical, and there should be no problem when, say, flu or malaria or Covid or AIDS come to kill us. Same event over and over.

DAVID: No, the process is identical for each different enemy.

The process of analysing and deciding how to use new information is the same, but the information is different, which means each new enemy requires new analysis and decision-making. Hence what you call the “adaptability”, which I suggest requires intelligence.

dhw: […] So what instructions were given by God 3.8 billion years ago? Please answer.

DAVID: How to make antibodies against so many enemies with one simple system.

And I suggest the “simple system” is a “mechanism” (perhaps God-given) that gives cells the autonomous ability to process and decide how to use new information (= adaptability). What else could it be if your God’s 3.8-billion-year old “instructions” do not cover every new threat?

Theodicy

dhw: [...] your basic solution to the problem of theodicy is to pretend that there is no problem.

DAVID: No, it is to point out the large proportionality of good reality vs. evil.

But that does not solve the problem of how an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God came to create evil!

Fine-tuning

DAVID: Fine tuning is recognizing all the physical factors that allow this universe to exist. Based on the CMB no oddball exist!!! Yes, all fine tuned to exist and allow life.

dhw: We know that life exists, and so of course the universe, no matter what it consists of, can be said to have allowed life to live. And we know that our part of the universe is “fine-tuned” for life because we live in it. But 95% per cent of the universe is not known to us, so how do you know it is “fine-tuned for life” unless we find life in those parts of the universe that we do not know?

DAVID: Do you fully understand what the CMB tells us? It is the embryo of the universe? All the same with no oddball areas. An embryo can only follow its design. When fine tuning was a hot topic thirty years ago, no expert voiced your contrary point.

Do you know the meaning of "fine tuning"? Definitions for you: “to adjust precisely so as to bring to the highest level of performance or effectiveness”. (Merriam-Webster) - or. “to make very small changes to something so that it is as good as it can possibly be.” (Oxford) No one can deny that the universe contains all the ingredients necessary for life, and it’s fair enough to point out the “constants” without which life would not be possible. But the presence of the ingredients and of the constants does not in itself create life! You are the first to lay enormous emphasis on the uniqueness of our planet and the unusualness of our galaxy. It is the “adjustments” that make life possible, and so far as we know, ours is the only planet in which all the adjustments have been made. The universe provides the basic elements, but the whole of the universe is NOT fine-tuned to support life. This is perfectly clear from our knowledge of the 5% we know. Ours is the only planet is which all the adjustments have been made. We know nothing about adjustments in the unknown 95% of the universe.