Searching for GOD...

[jeremyp]

The material universe certainly has no remit to care about anything.
The concept of likes and dislikes arise from conscious awareness for which we have no material definition or explanation.
Before you can get to the propagation of genes or the concept of survival - there is a monumental task of creating living cells capable of reproduction, followed by the organisation of these cells to facilitate sexual reproduction.

Reproduction doesn't need to be sexual. Bacteria are vastly simpler than even the simplest eukaryotic cell and they mostly reproduce asexually. People have set up test tube experiments in which RNA was able to reproduce with just a few enzymes. Who knows how much simpler you could go.

Here is an interesting short video of a top eye surgeon who was an atheist prior to contemplating the amazing complexity of the human eye.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43pQSZ4tVbM

Really? You are going to trot out the old eye canard? Please get some education.

[Gordon]

Alan regularly posts things for us to look at: this certainly appealed to me.

https://newsthump.com/2024/09/09/pope-keeps-a-straight-face-while-calling-for-end-to-superstition-and-magic/?mc_cid=6043dc39f6&mc_eid=ee8be6ec71

[torridon]

       

[Alan Burns]

Reproduction doesn't need to be sexual. Bacteria are vastly simpler than even the simplest eukaryotic cell and they mostly reproduce asexually. People have set up test tube experiments in which RNA was able to reproduce with just a few enzymes. Who knows how much simpler you could go.

The question I posed was how simple cell reproduction can somehow organise itself to facilitate sexual reproduction.

Really? You are going to trot out the old eye canard? Please get some education.

The internationally acclaimed laser eye specialist was speculating upon how trilllions of cells need to line up perfectly to facilitate the working of the eye - if just one of those cells was out of alignment the person would be born blind.  Dr Wang's life story has been made into a film entitled "Sight".  A you seriously suggesting that Dr Wang needs to get some education?

[Gordon]

The question I posed was how simple cell reproduction can somehow organise itself to facilitate sexual reproduction.

Just happens, Alan - just biology doing it's stuff without having to be 'organised'.

The internationally acclaimed laser eye specialist was speculating upon how trilllions of cells need to line up perfectly to facilitate the working of the eye - if just one of those cells was out of alignment the person would be born blind.  Dr Wang's life story has been made into a film entitled "Sight".  A you seriously suggesting that Dr Wang needs to get some education?

Yet he's presumably made a career out of fixing dodgy eyes - think about that! That he's caught a dose of Christianity is a separate issue.

[jeremyp]

The question I posed was how simple cell reproduction can somehow organise itself to facilitate sexual reproduction.

The eukaryotic cell appears to be a composite of several simpler cells. Whatever the process, it isn’t just a cell evolving in the way you seem to think.

The internationally acclaimed laser eye specialist was speculating upon how trilllions of cells need to line up perfectly to facilitate the working of the eye - if just one of those cells was out of alignment the person would be born blind.

That’s complete nonsense. People can see to at least some extent with all sorts of eye defects. I, for example, have slight astigmatism which is more than one cell out of alignment and yet I can still see imperfectly without spectacles.

  Dr Wang's life story has been made into a film entitled "Sight".  A you seriously suggesting that Dr Wang needs to get some education?

If you are accurately reporting his views, then yes, he needs some education. But I was actually talking about you. The nonsense about the impossibility of eye evolution has been debunked many times over, not least by Charles Darwin.

[Outrider]

The question I posed was how simple cell reproduction can somehow organise itself to facilitate sexual reproduction.

It doesn't 'organise itself'. It mutates, and most of those mutations are either non-viable or provide no benefit, and some of those disappear from the genetic record quickly, some hang around, and some flourish. Their descendants then do or don't make use of them, and some of them therefore become the new norm for at least a branch of the family. No-one is 'organising' it, there is no plan, there's just random change and subsequent pruning.

The internationally acclaimed laser eye specialist was speculating upon how trilllions of cells need to line up perfectly to facilitate the working of the eye - if just one of those cells was out of alignment the person would be born blind.

I have an astigmatism. The whole shape of the lens of my eyes are distorted from spherical, by definition a misalignment of millions of cells. Either he's lying, or he's stupid, or you're inaccurately reflecting what he's saying, because whilst I wear glasses for practical improvements I'm a world away from being blind.

Dr Wang's life story has been made into a film entitled "Sight".  A you seriously suggesting that Dr Wang needs to get some education?

Maybe. In science or ethics. Or, more likely, you need to get an education, given past performance on your inability to grasp the basics of how evolution works I think the most likely explanation here is that you've misunderstood.

O.

[Nearly Sane]

Just to note I'm another astigmatic

[Stranger]

The question I posed was how simple cell reproduction can somehow organise itself to facilitate sexual reproduction.

The internationally acclaimed laser eye specialist was speculating upon how trilllions of cells need to line up perfectly to facilitate the working of the eye - if just one of those cells was out of alignment the person would be born blind.  Dr Wang's life story has been made into a film entitled "Sight".  A you seriously suggesting that Dr Wang needs to get some education?

This kind of argument is just odd. I mean apart from the misunderstanding of things "organising themselves" and the fact that the complexity of the eye being a seriously old and many, many times discredited anti-evolution idea.

I don't believe that you deny evolution happened, so why would a God create a universe in which it looks exactly like evolution is a full explanation of the diversity and features of life, but which it had to somehow tinker with because it doesn't quite work?

Surely it would make far more sense to either to not use evolution at all (especially considering all the suffering it involves) or design things better in the first place, so there's no need for tinkering with it along the way?

[Dicky Underpants]

Here is an interesting short video of a top eye surgeon who was an atheist prior to contemplating the amazing complexity of the human eye.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43pQSZ4tVbM

Strange that 'God' did a rather better job in organising the eye of the octopus. A more interesting question would be how two rather similar organs came to be on two totally divergent lines of evolution (diverging from a common ancestor hundreds of millions of years ago, AFAIk). However, the phenomenon of parallel evolution in totally diverse genera is well known, and evolutionary biologists have gone a long way to explaining this without the need for supernatural guidance.