Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Sunday, February 21, 2021, 11:13 (1154 days ago) @ David Turell

Evolution: always advancing or not?

DAVID: God has never told me why He evolved us, but since God is the designer/creator, He did.

dhw: The question is not why he evolved us, but why – if we (plus food supply) were his only goal – he designed all the other life forms plus food supplies, 99% of which had no connection with humans. See “theodicy” for your only way out of this endless and pointless repetition of dodges.

DAVID: Your objection is totally illogical. My simple logical reasoning stays the same: God chose to evolve us from bacteria, thus the known history.

But if he exists, he also chose to evolve millions of other life forms, and 99% of them had no connection with humans, but you insist that humans were his only purpose, and so you have no idea why he chose to evolve all the other life forms. Please stop dodging!

DAVID: The huge bush is food supply.

But the huge bush of the past was not for humans, and you insist that every life form etc. was "part of the goal of evolving humans".! Please stop dodging!

DAVID: I never dodge this point of view. And you cannot demolish it, no matter hoe much you complain.

You have just repeated the same dodges that you have been using for months if not years. Please stop it, and let’s move on.

Extreme extremophiles

DAVID: No purpose. Life can adapt to living everywhere and to survive extinction events God knew would happen. He wanted life to survive any eventuality, toughness built-in.

dhw: Some life forms survive and some don’t. But if God exists, I’ll go along with the idea that he provided cells with the mechanism which he knew would enable some of them to survive and even to evolve. So if your God wanted life to survive, what makes you think that whatever method he may have used to enable them to survive did not have the purpose of enabling them to survive?

DAVID: It did in the sense I have given. So life would exist always.

And what is the continuance of life if it’s not survival?

Physical change in speciation

DAVID: Secondhand designing requires too many instructions, and may create mistakes.

dhw: [referring to autonomous cellular intelligence): […] of course it will create mistakes – that’s why organisms die, or hadn’t you noticed?]

DAVID: Silly. Do you expect to die of a mistake? You will wear out as I am doing.

dhw: Dear Dr Turell, have you never heard of people and animals dying from errors in the system (i.e. various well-known diseases), from lack of resistance to bad bacteria and viruses, or from an inability to cope with new conditions?

DAVID: My point is most of us die of wearing out, not mistakes.

I’m sure that will provide great consolation for those who do die because of mistakes (i.e. the list of horrendous diseases). My point is that there ARE mistakes, so there is no point in dismissing the cellular theory just because it would make mistakes.