Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Sunday, December 20, 2020, 09:30 (1223 days ago) @ dhw

Fine tuning
dhw: An unpredictable free-for-all would be so much more interesting for him than a dull Garden of Eden.

DAVID: Now you propose a God who is so bored He needs an exciting free-for-all, and then you complain about my accusation about humanizing!!!

You are sure that he is interested in his creations, likes them, and is satisfied with them. You also believe that he probably has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours. And you can’t explain why – if your God’s one and only purpose was to design humans - there has been a vast variety of extinct life forms, econiches, natural wonders etc., 99% of which had no connection with humans. Put all of this together, and then tell me why it is illogical for your God to have wanted to create something he could be interested in, could like, and could be satisfied by.

Egnor’s latest
DAVID: I specifically said He designed evolution.

dhw: You certainly did, and created a strong and logical case. Fortunately, you never said anything remotely like the theory I have just summarized above. Very wise of you.

DAVID: Again, God's choice to evolve from bacteria is obvious to theists.

It is obvious even to atheist evolutionists that ALL life forms evolved from simple life forms. You have forgotten that what is not obvious is the theory bolded above, which very wisely you did not include in your books.

Chimps ‘r’ not us
dhw: Chimps and other animals all have to use their brains in order to process information, take decisions and give material expression to those decisions. Even bacteria have to do the same, though they haven’t got brains. Do they all have souls?

DAVID: In the Jewish religion they have animal souls.

dhw: That would make sense for dualists. I wonder where the boundary lies. Do ants have souls, then? What is your own view about animal souls?

DAVID: I believe they exist, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if it reaches insects in Jewish thought.

I’m not asking about Jewish thought. I asked if YOU thought ants had souls.

Strange quark stars may exist
DAVID: And the moral is survival is not needed to have a brain like this. This clearly means survivability is not an issue which causes any sort of any evolutionary advance. It is an unproven Darwinistic proposal. 'Survival of the fittest' is a tautology, and doesn't tell us how speciation happens.

dhw: […] it is perfectly possible that our brains began to change as a result of our ancestors developing or having to develop new means of surviving/improving their chances of survival.

DAVID: As I see it, animals and plants definitely sense danger, but it is said we are the only species that recognizes eventual death. I don't see us wildly changing to avoid death. Again you are clinging to pure Darwinism that there is a real drive for survival. I accept it as a reasonable but unproven theory, and doubt strongly it is a factor in speciation.

Your doubts about a “real drive” for survival run against all experience of life at all levels, including human. Its influence is observable even now in the way life forms adapt to new conditions or die. But nobody knows the cause of speciation, and so all we can do is look for logical explanations (a) for the driving force, and (b) for the kind of mechanism that might enable organisms to change their structures. Your acknowledgement that it is “reasonable” to propose that (a) might be the urge to survive is fine with me. I have no idea why you would have strong doubts about its influence on evolution, other than your built-in hostility towards Darwinism.

Our galaxy has ancient clusters:
DAVID: Note the age of the Milky Way at 12 billion years, which is just 1.78 billion years from the estimated Big Bang. As I see God in charge of evolving the universe, I see Him here starting early to set up the proper galaxy to contain a special planet for life.

And your explanation for the billions of other galaxies that have been and in some cases gone?