Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Sunday, December 20, 2020, 17:59 (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!!!

dhw: You are sure that he is interested in his creations, likes them, and is satisfied with them.

Not so. I'm not sure He is interested. Just probably

dhw: You also believe that he probably has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours.

Again, only the use of logic. Stop the distortions

dhw: 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.

Same silly complaint, with you thinking God shouldn't have done it the way He did.

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.

dhw: 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.

Same silly complaint. God chooses to do as He wishes

Chimps ‘r’ not us

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.

dhw: I’m not asking about Jewish thought. I asked if YOU thought ants had souls. I follow Hewish thought. I f they accept ants, I do.

Strange quark stars may exist

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.

dhw: 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.

Survival of the fittest is just an observation, proving nothing.

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.

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

dhw: They are not gone. This is a discussion about ancient clusters!!! I can't answer your weird inference as to why the universe is so big. God has His reasons. But the Milky Way is ancient and took time to grow to this size