Back to theodicy and David's theories (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by David Turell , Friday, February 12, 2021, 16:04 (1168 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: With God I am trapped into using humanizing words to describe His non-human state.

dhw: Nobody says he is human. But you can’t avoid human characteristics if you want to talk about his purpose! And what’s wrong with doing so? You agree that he “possibly” (previously “probably”) has human characteristics, and you even insist that you know which ones he doesn’t have! (Besides, you had him caring so much that he tried and failed to correct some of the errors resulting from his high-speed system.) But your answer does enable you once more to avoid the problem of his directly designing Covid-19 et al and your certainty that he is interested in all that’s going on but can’t have wanted to create something that would interest him.

Aside from the possibility that the Chinese designed the virus, it probably arose from mutations of any earlier existing corona virus, God not involved. Wanting to create an interesting item is pure humanizing. God has purpose in creation, not to provide interest to avoid boredom. Is He interested in the result? Of course He would be as a secondary effect, not as a primary as you pose it..

DAVID: You twist. I don't. The connection with humans is that humans evolved like everything here.

dhw: This is getting sillier and sillier. According to you he designed every life form. If his only aim was to design humans, why did he design all the extinct life forms that had no connection with humans? You have told us again and again that you have no idea, so why don’t you just leave it at that?

As usual you ignore food supply.

Transposons

DAVID: Survival is not a proven theory but Darwin-speak guess work. The apes prove our brain was not needed for survival.

dhw: No they don’t. We have no idea why certain groups of apes descended from the trees, but it is perfectly feasible that local environments made it necessary or more advantageous for them to do so, while elsewhere apes were perfectly fine as they were. What do you think would have been the main preoccupation of the earliest hominins?

Food supply and protection from dangers, same as apes.

Insect plasticity

DAVID: See my new entry on DNA pre-planning. You always seem to forget that bacteria are here successfully since the beginning. Their example offers no reason for evolution going any further, does it?

dhw: I never stop reminding you, because they are the living proof that NONE of the later life forms were "needed", and so it is absurd to argue that humans are special because their brain was not "needed". They are special because they have unique qualities.

You forgotten to tell me all advances are the result of the need for survival.

DAVID: Therefore evolution had an advancing guiding force, which is not the Darwinist survival daydream of a theory.

dhw: What “daydream”? What do you think is/was the prime driving force behind all life forms if not survival? Multicellularity – i.e. the cooperation of cell communities – clearly provided new means of survival. Or do you think every new organ and strategy and natural wonder came into existence just for the fun of it?

For God's purpose. Ah, I knew survival would appear. Still no explanation for the human brain, except Adler's, on the basis of pure survival. Your Darwin steak is showing. I've never accepted the idea.

DAVID: Darwin wisely avoided the issue of origin of life and he doesn't ever explain how the earliest organisms had the intelligence to know how to manage an advance. Now we see DNA was setup for prompt advances. Clever designer at work.

dhw: Nobody can explain how advances take place, but those of us who believe in common descent will of course agree that the first cells must have contained a mechanism that would lead to all the advances! Cellular intelligence (perhaps provided by God) is one theory, Darwin opted for random mutations refined by natural selection, and you opt for a divine 3.8-billion-year-old programme for every undabbled change.

I simply posit God speciates.