Natures wonders: seabirds food finding flight patterns (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, April 18, 2020, 13:06 (1470 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You avoid the point about trial and error, which is a clear indication that birds try things out, learn from their mistakes, and eventually in this case come up with a highly intelligent solution to the problem of finding enough food to survive on. So how can you possibly say this whole process is NOT a sign of intelligence?

DAVID: This is a discussion of how this came about. It is just discovered with no known history. We do not know if it evolved from a previous ancestor who had a designed flight pattern. Trial and error means most of a flock died, before the flock realized that it worked. Like speciation we do not know how instincts developed. Like the weaverbird they could well be designed. Still no sign of much intelligent realization about a possible feeding process.

The question is indeed how the established strategy first arose. It makes no difference whether it was these birds or their ancestors: the fact remains that trial and error involves trying things out, learning from mistakes, and eventually coming up with a solution that works. According to you, God designs everything, in which case there would have been no trial and error because according to you he knows everything in advance and never makes mistakes. Your last sentence is a give-away: “no sign of much intelligent realization”. Why must you quantify? Either your God designed the strategy, or the birds worked it out for themselves (probably learning by trial and error), regardless of how "much" intelligence it took. Ditto all the other natural wonders.

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DAVID: You want exactitude. I don't have it, but I would guess God knew viruses were part of His evolution and gave us the brains to handle it

dhw: What do you mean by “knew they were part of his evolution”? Either he designed them or he didn’t. Which do you think it is? And do please take a guess as to why he might want to test us.

DAVID: I have no way of knowing if He wanted to test us. He created viruses because they help in evolution. He gave us the brain to fight the bad ones; God's simple foresight. […] The bold is an example of your strange interpretations of what I write. Of course He knows what he does!!! As designer, of course He designs.

Your phrasing does NOT mean he designed them, which is why I pinned you down. No need to haggle now that you have agreed that he designed them.

dhw: First you confirm that in your view he wants to test us, and then when I ask you why, you say you don’t know if he wants to test us! In fact, you don’t know any of what you state with such exactitude, and when I question it, you complain that I want exactitude!

DAVID: You push me to explain what God does. All I can do is make intelligent guesses based on my view of God, which is directly opposed to your humanized version.

I don’t push you. You keep telling us exactly what God does, and I challenge the logic of your exact statements. That is when you say that they are guesses, and I mustn’t ask for exactitude. The lack of coherence has nothing to do with the alternatives I offer. He wants to test us: oops, maybe he doesn’t. God is in complete charge and can do anything he wants whenever wants to. But “we don’t know if God can make life work perfectly” and “God knew some bacteria and viruses would cause problems. Therefore He gave us a huge brain with a giant conceptual area with which to work and solve problems.” So he designed them in such a way that they would cause problems, and let's ignore all the other life forms throughout the history of life and of bad viruses and all the humans who now suffer and/or die because of the baddies. It’s OK, because 315,000 years ago, God gave us huge brains to solve the problems. We are of course back to theodicy, but that is NOT my focus, which is YOUR exact statements about your God’s purpose, method and nature and the constant stream of contradictions and illogicalities that arise from them.

DAVID: Addendum. See today's entry on giant viruses.
DAVID: Since these viruses are part of the lowest sections of the sea food web, and affect phytoplankton photosynthesis, using CO2 and producing free O2., it can be proposed they are a significant part of God's design plan.

Which has nothing to do with the problem of the destructive viruses which your God directly designed in order to test the human brain – or maybe not, depending on which day of the week it is. Here’s another theory for you: God set up all the mechanisms for life and for evolution of life, and then let those mechanisms do their own thing. No “humanizing” at all here, so you’ll have to abandon that escape route, and no intellectual knot-tying trying to find a reason why he specially designed the baddies. Can you find any logical weakness in it when you compare it to the actual history of life?