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

by David Turell , Friday, April 25, 2025, 18:20 (18 hours, 7 minutes ago) @ dhw

Evolution

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

dhw: How many more times? NO! The 0.1% of survivors produced the species that are alive today.

But where did the survivors come from? The extinct produced the survivors. Evolution is a living continuum.

dhw; Species that die out leaving no descendants cannot produce surviving descendants. For the 100th time, LISTEN TO YOURSELF:

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

This means that according to you, your God specially designed and had to cull 99.9% of species as they were irrelevant to his one and only purpose (to produce us and our food). That is why you call him inefficient. Yes or no?

No. Certain branches of evolution produced nothing as is seen in the Cambrian. Several species developed nothing and went extinct.

A start of multicellularity

dhw: [...] 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.

DAVID: Of course.

dhw: You cannot believe that what your God created was precisely what he wanted to create. He simply has to be messy, cumbersome and inefficient, because your theory concerning his purpose and method must be right. I wonder how many of your fellow believers would wish to sing hymns in praise of such an inefficient blunderer.

God did create what He wished to create. Why He decided to evolve everything by evolution is from His unknown reasoning.

Zombification

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

dhw: Still not an answer. Bearing in mind your belief that your God created all systems for the sole benefit of us humans, would you say that zombification is necessary for our existence and survival?

It is part of an ecosystem as explained above. With all the articles produced here showing the delicacy of balances in nature you still don't get it. Remember reintroducing wolves into Yellowstone undid the damage done by humans removing them.

Possible alien life

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

dhw: Fine-tuning includes the environmental and biological conditions necessary for life. Do you believe that the environmental and biological conditions necessary for life are present throughout the entire universe? Of course you don’t. And so it is nonsense to claim that the entire universe is fine-tuned for life. THAT is the whole point of this discussion.

As the earth once could not support life but then evolved to allow it, other regions have the option to do it as this universe is basically constructed.

Clever corvids

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.

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

dhw: It’s not a wish but a theory which dispenses with chance as well as with your ridicule of your God. We can still say he is in charge if he decides to create a free-for-all instead of a clumsy mess of 99.9% failures. The only wishing here lies in the fact that, as you once openly confessed: “I first choose a form of God I wish to believe in. The rest follows.” The rest is one set of contradictions after another, which you yourself once described as “schizophrenic”.

I'll stick with my form of God.