New Miscellany Parts 1 &:2: evolution, brain, zombies etc. (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, April 24, 2025, 18:15 (1 day, 18 hours, 53 min. ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Of course He wanted what He created.

dhw: So once and for all, please stop telling us that he inefficiently designed and had to cull 99.9 out of 100 species which had no connection with what he wanted. And please don’t repeat your absurd claim that we are all the descendants of the extinct 99.9% that had no descendants living today.

The 99.9% extinct produced the 0.1% l surviving. Yes or no?

A start of multicellularity

DAVID: The 'some reason' is I think God is a designer in charge.

dhw: Yet again: You think your God only wanted to create us plus food, and therefore specially designed and culled 99.9 out of 100 species that had nothing to do with us and our food. You have no idea why, you acknowledge that it makes him into an inefficient designer, but that’s OK because it puts him in charge.

Of course.

Zombification

dhw: Do you believe your God preprogrammed this strategy 3.8 billion years ago, or suddenly decided that zombification would be a great help to us humans (his sole purpose) and popped in to give zombification courses to all his potential parasites.? Please answer.

DAVID: Designed parts of a necessary ecosystem.

dhw: Once again, necessary for what? Once again: Do you believe he preprogrammed or dabbled zombification because we couldn’t exist/survive without it?

All ecosystems are intertwined and are therefore necessary for the whole Earth's living systems.

Possible alien life

DAVID: A nuanced difference: potentially any object can modify itself like Earth did to add life.

dhw: I didn’t know you believed in D-I-Y fine-tuning! There are no such “nuances”. Your original statement was that the entire universe is fine-tuned for life. We know that it isn’t, because we know that there are sections of the universe which are neither environmentally nor biologically fine-tuned for life. Why are you dragging this out?

"There are no such 'nuances'" WE KNOW OF. Mars may once had life. I define fine-tuning as providing potentiality for life supporting regions.

Clever corvids

dhw: We always think of intelligence in terms of what matters to us, but many humans simply cannot conceive of the possibility that every living form, all the way down to single cells, must have some form of intelligence to enable it to survive.

DAVID: Single cells follow intelligent instructions.

dhw: You agree that single-celled bacteria have their own autonomous intelligence. There is no reason to suppose that other cells are automatons, or that intelligent cells lose their intelligence when they form communities. I don’t ask you to believe Shapiro’s theory but simply to open your mind to the possibility that it's true, and to recognize that it dispenses with chance as well with your need to ridicule your God’s inefficiency.

God is in charge no matter what you wish about Shapiro.