autonomy v. automaticity (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, March 25, 2018, 12:27 (2222 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Since He had to be sure humans evolved, He maintained full guidance.

dhw: Why have you changed “control” to “guidance”? In the first quote, you have no way of telling whether God has total control, but the moment I raise the spectre of him deliberately sacrificing control, you scurry back to full control. So now we have the astonishing hypothesis that your God deliberately created bad bacteria and viruses in order to be sure that humans evolved.

DAVID: Your conclusion leaves out my uncertainty as shown in what I bolded above.

dhw: What you bolded above is in direct contrast to what I have bolded above: “he maintained full guidance”. What is “full guidance” if it’s not total control?

DAVID: What I have suggested is that guidance might entail some freedom of design within the evolutionary changes organisms adapt. It was not meant to imply tight rigid controls over every move. As I said before, the evidence does not give me an exact conclusion, which is why I used the dabble concept. What I see is humans appearing for no good environmental challange reason.

We are talking about bad bacteria and viruses. You don’t know whether God’s creation of bad bacteria and viruses shows loss of control, but “He maintained full guidance”, which now means partial guidance. So either he lost control, or he deliberately left “freedom of design” so that bad bacteria and viruses could design themselves. And if he could give that freedom to bacteria and viruses, or he lost control and they went and did their own thing, why not the same with other organisms as well?

DAVID: Mindless robots are rigidly programmed. Bird brains are conscious and can work out solutions that become instincts like cup nests.

dhw: Thank you. Organisms that have the autonomous ability to work out solutions is the very core of my hypothesis concerning how the higgledy-piggledy bush of life has evolved. […] No more agonizing over whether he was/wasn’t in control, or how the heck we can link knotty nests and bad viruses to the production of the human brain, or why it took him 3.x billion years to produce the only thing he really wanted to produce. Three hearty cheers for the conscious, intelligent, decision-making, solution-providing, autonomous bird brain!

DAVID: All of which does not explain the complex designs in the biochemistry of life which I constantly put on display here, and for which you have no answer. Where does the underlying information come from? Not thin air. Enjoy your pipe dream. It doesn't fit the evidence of design.

With your comments on bad bacteria and viruses and bird brains, you have offered your support to the answer I keep giving you: namely, that organisms may have “freedom of design”. And my answer has ALWAYS offered the possibility that your God designed the mechanism which gave them that freedom: namely, the autonomous intelligence which you are now prepared to grant to bacteria and viruses and birds other than the weaver.