Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Monday, April 05, 2021, 18:58 (1118 days ago) @ dhw

Tectonics and environment

dhw: That means that God is the source of information in the DNA code. How does that make the information into the source of life? You might as well say that the instructions enclosed with your bottle of medicine are the source of your medicine.

DAVID: You are so confused about instructions with your analogy. God's instructions create the dance of the molecules that bring the emergence of life into fruition.

dhw: Thank you for using the simple term “instructions” instead of “instructional information”. But you are still “so confused”. Instructions do not create anything. Something has to write the instructions, and something has to obey the instructions before there is a “dance”. According to you, your God wrote the instructions and also designed the molecules. And so it is patently absurd to refer to “information as the source of life”, when by information you mean instructions.

You have described the way cells must use the information to make life emerge. Without those instructions nothing happens, does it? So what is your objection in the final analysis? The appearance of life depends upon those exact instructions to be followed, and those instructions are information. Stop playing word games please.

Nasty butterflies

DAVID: You are in total confusion as to how and why God uses control. He doesn't control possums more than He controls us. Possums have free will to use his trick as we have free will. My God doesn't control where my dog poops. Don't you see that most creatures have oodles of free will in action and thought. God has given up control in many logical ways. He doesn't have to control brain expansion, He must do that as designer or He would be derelict in His creationing.

dhw: We are not talking about WHEN or WHERE organisms play dead, migrate, build nests or bridges, but about the ORIGIN of all the strategies and lifestyles. You have suddenly decided that strategies relating to the “war for eating” are “simple adaptations” which God leaves to the organisms themselves to design (e.g. caterpillar cannibalism and rape). But the possum can’t design his trick of “playing dead” in order to avoid being a victim in “the war for eating”! All the same, I’m glad you now concede that your God has given up control in many logical ways. This may be a fruitful concession. I’m not sure what your reference to brain expansion means. You say he doesn’t have to control it (thank you for agreeing with me), but the rest of your sentence seems to say that he does have to control it! A bit of confusion there.

The sentence that confuses you simply means God theoretically could give up His enlarging of the homo brain but then sapiens would not appear, so He logically doesn't stop that activity.

dhw: And we shouldn’t forget your agreement that he doesn’t control complexification. I agree that I’m in “total confusion” when I read in one post that your God is in total control, but in another he is not in total control.

In regard to control exercised by God it is to guarantee survival. In the war of eat or be eaten, it must continue as all that survive must eat to survive..