Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, August 22, 2020, 11:06 (1333 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You've repeated that you find my logic illogical, but your complaints are illogical to me.

dhw: Then once and for all, please explain why an all-powerful God, whose one and only purpose is to design H. sapiens plus food supply, designs millions of now extinct non-human life forms and their food supplies that have no connection with H. sapiens, before eventually designing the only life form plus food supply that he actually wants to design. And please bear in mind that your concept of evolution entails the direct design of all species, i.e. by preprogramming or dabbling. And please don’t tell us that all the millions of extinct non-human life forms etc. were necessary to feed humans who didn’t even arrive until millions of years later.

DAVID: You've left out my usual answer. God chose to evolve us. As God, he certainly had the right to choose to evolve any thing and everything. (You've previously agreed) My clear and logical reasoning comes by examples of His works: created the universe and evolving it; created the Earth and evolved it by creating life and evolving it. (Life has been accepted as helping to evolve Earth's conditions). In my view of God, God evolves all aspects of reality. It is your problem, not mine. End of discussion.

Sadly it is indeed your usual answer, which is to dodge the question. If God exists, all the above is logical. What is not logical is to claim that the purpose of all the above was to produce one species (us) plus food supply, that evolution means direct design of all species, and that instead of directly designing us, he first directly designed millions of now extinct non-humans and their food supplies that had no connection with us. There is no discussion if you refuse even to deal with the subject we are discussing.

DAVID: We were His goal and all of evolution creating the bush is required. You don't accept we were the goal.

dhw: […] I have offered you two theistic theories which accept us either as THE goal (experimentation), or as A goal (we only occurred to your God late on in the process). Other theories entail a different goal. You have accepted all of these theories as logical, theistic explanations of life’s history.

DAVID: Same humanizing versions of God. I agree as human reasoning they are logical, but my view of God's personality is not yours and in my view He doesn't ever think/reason as you do. Since my interpretation of who God is as a personality differs so much from your's, we will never agree. I follow Adler: God is a person like no other person.

Nobody could possibly think that God is like any other “person”! But according to you (and I agree), he probably has thought patterns, emotions and other attributes similar to ours. You cannot fathom the logic behind your theory – which has nothing to do with “personality” – so how can you know that he thinks in a manner you can’t understand, and does not think in a manner you can understand?

Under Evolution: genomic evidence of preplanning:
Fins to hands:
https://phys.org/news/2020-08-lungfish-fins-reveal-limbs-evolved.html

QUOTE: "An international team of biologists based at the University of Konstanz (Germany)... has determined how limbs have evolved from fins using embryos of the Australian lungfish (Neoceratodus forsteri) for their study."

dhw: These patterns are a clear confirmation of common descent. […] They also fit in with the theory that throughout evolution, intelligent cells have created or reorganized their own structures in response to changing environmental conditions. […]

DAVID: Yes, common descent, but Godless in your description.

dhw: Must I always repeat that cellular intelligence may have been invented by your God?

DAVID: And I'll repeat the appearance of intelligence is shown in cells reactions following God's instructions. How do you explain cells errors during evolution, which we know occur? We also know most mistakes make for bad mutations, and very few are beneficial.

Your “instructions” = a 3.8-billion-year-old set of programmes for every undabbled innovation, lifestyle, natural wonder and bacterial response in the whole history of life. I find that hard to swallow. I have offered you a theistic explanation of the so-called “errors”: your God wanted them. He did not create a system he didn’t want and had to keep trying to correct, but a system that would create the vast variety of forms and lifestyles and natural wonders that make up the history of life as we know it. The vast variety also incorporates disease and death, because if it didn’t, Planet Earth would rapidly run out of room for everything and everyone! Cellular intelligence – unlike that if your (sometimes) all-powerful God - is limited! There are “errors” it can’t correct. That, I suggest, is what your God wanted.

DAVID: And we also know through Behe, most advances are precise DNA deletions. Factor these facts into your answer, as I do.

How does Behe’s theory invalidate the theory of cellular intelligence? If your God could delete DNA, so could intelligent cells.