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

by dhw, Sunday, March 14, 2021, 12:01 (1140 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Years ago I interpreted your objection to indicate you wanted God to directly create humans. Your ideas still come across that way. I don't accept your position. You don't accept mine. Don't refer to my concept of evolution derisively and I won't bother to respond.

I do not refer to your concept derisively, and I do not “want” your God to do anything differently. I offer various theories to cover different aspects of your illogical theory. You have no idea why, if your God’s one and only purpose was to design H. sapiens plus food supply, he chose to design millions of life forms and food supplies, 99% of which had no connection with H. sapiens. (If you do have an idea why, then please tell us at last.) If I accept your basic premises that he designed every life form but only wanted one, I offer the logical theory of experimentation. An alternative: that he did not start out with just that one purpose, but developed new ideas as he went along. These are not “derisive” dismissals of your theory but a genuine attempt to reconcile it with the facts of life’s history as we know it. You acknowledge their logic, but they don’t fit in with your preconceptions concerning God’s character, and so you continue to promulgate your theory and to find different ways of dodging its illogicality.

Viruses

dhw: […] if he likes doing something, why do you consider it excessively human to propose that maybe he does what he does BECAUSE he likes doing it?

DAVID: Only a human wants to do something pleasurable (likes). You are still humanizing God, and He is not human.

For the life of me I can’t see why liking something is not human, but wanting to do something you like is human. And still you dodge your own agreement that your God possibly (formerly "probably") has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours. That does not make him human. It simply means that he created a being with some thought patterns and emotions similar to his own. Why do you find that possible and yet impossible?

Placenta

dhw: […] why do you think he would have provided mechanisms for error correction? […]

DAVID: God would want the system He invented to work as well as it should. but knows self-folding proteins could make mistakes since He doesn't have them on puppet strings.

That doesn’t explain why he tried (though often failed) to correct the errors. It merely underlines his lack of control over the system he designed. Bearing in mind the terrible diseases that are caused by some of the errors, I’m asking why you think he wanted to correct them.

Viruses

dhw: If organisms have the autonomous ability to adapt, how can you be so sure that they do not have the autonomous ability to innovate? […]

DAVID: I've told you I don't think God does design by second-hand mechanisms He granted to organisms. There is a great difference in instructing someone as to how to do it, and it doing it yourself, more directed and much quicker.

I don’t understand the second sentence. Your alternatives are preprogramming and dabbling (“instructions” could mean either.) That doesn’t explain why he couldn’t have given them the wherewithal to make big changes! It merely repeats your rigid opposition to a perfectly logical theory.

DAVID: Speciation requires complex knowledge of the design requirements for future use. New species always work in their future a point you constantly illogically ignore.

It is a point I constantly reject – I don’t ignore it. In my theory, speciation does NOT “work in the future”, but is the result of a direct response to the organism’s PRESENT. When conditions change (for whatever reason) the organism must also change in order to survive in the new conditions (adaptation), or it may find that the new conditions offer new ways of improving its chances of survival (innovation). Our example is the whale’s flippers. Your theory: 3.8 billion years ago or x million years ago your God foresaw the need for the pre-whale to enter the water, and preprogrammed or dabbled the change from legs to flippers before it was necessary. My theory: pre-whales had trouble finding food on land, discovered that life in the water improved their chances of survival, and in due course the cell communities – using their possibly God-given intelligence – made all the adjustments necessary for optimising the body’s adaptation to maritime life. No crystal ball involved. Every change a RESPONSE to existing conditions.

DAVID: You obviously don't want God to have any controls, although you give it lip service, which is why I view you as looking for natural methods of speciation.

“Wanting” is not the point. You obviously “want” your God to be in full control of everything. I believe evolution happened, and what I want is an explanation of how it works. Like Darwin, I begin my quest at Chapter Two of life: how evolution works, not how life and evolution originated. The intelligent cell theory does not omit your God, which is why I don’t like your use of the word “natural”, as I suspect it implies exclusion of God. God is not excluded if it was his choice to give evolution free rein.