Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, January 21, 2017, 13:26 (2644 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I have the same old problem trying to differentiate between pre-planning or dabbling. No matter, God is in control.
dhw: My “same old problem” is that you seem to have your God personally intervening, or loading the first cells with billions of programmes to cope with every difficulty that even the most basic forms of life will ever encounter (not to mention all the innovations and natural wonders of evolution). Bad luck on those that die. The programme never reached them, or perhaps God was too busy that day to come to their aid. There has to be an alternative to this theory. So why not consider the possibility that your God enabled the cells to work out solutions for themselves?
DAVID: Because I see evidence they have the smarts to do it. the changes in the gaps is generally too complex.

I presume you mean “no evidence”. Let’s put this another way, then. You find it difficult to believe that your God could have given organisms the intelligence to work out their own solutions, innovations and wonders, and there is no evidence that they have such intelligence. However, you have no difficulty believing that your God provided the first cells with a computer programme for every solution etc., or that he personally stepped in if his programme didn’t cover the problem, and yet there is no evidence for either of these propositions. And you wonder why I accuse you of double standards.

DAVID: You have introduced consciousness in this suggestion. That is a major different set of circumstances, a non-material state while simple evolution of life is material.
dhw: You have missed the point. You refuse to accept the possibility that God might allow life to follow its own course – i.e. that he would sacrifice control. Human free will is an analogy. If he is prepared to let humans do their own thing, why would he not be prepared to let the cells do their own thing? Sacrificing control is the point of the analogy.
DAVID: Because I think humans are the goal and most likely won't arrive by a chance process of evolution.

It doesn’t have to be chance. My perhaps God-given autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism makes invention deliberate, and in any case it allows for God to dabble. Once again: you believe that having dabbled or preprogrammed humans, he has ceded control to their free will. That is the analogy: that he allowed organisms to work out their own solutions/variations/adaptations/improvements (though he could dabble if he wanted to). As mentioned before, you have actually agreed to this possibility, but for some reason you offer your agreement, then snatch it back again because you are so fixed on your own hypothesis of total control through preprogramming and dabbling. If you stand by your agreement that the autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism is possible, and you stop insisting that only God could plan or dabble every solution/innovation/ natural wonder, we could finally move on.