Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Monday, October 04, 2021, 11:37 (936 days ago) @ David Turell

Survival
DAVID: My point is God designs evolution stage by stage. He is the driver.

dhw: And my point is that even if this were true, you yourself keep telling us that “new species are designed by God to ensure future survival following their appearance”. If that is his purpose, I suggest that the changes that lead to speciation and hence to evolution are driven by his desire to ensure their survival. […]

DAVID: That still makes God the driver.

dhw: And the motive that drives him is to ensure future survival. […]

DAVID: Stop twisting meanings. I've said survival is required prior to each new species.

And you’ve also said “survival has nothing to do with the appearance of new species”. How can that be true if your God’s motive for changing anatomies was to ensure the survival of the respective organisms?

Reductionism
DAVID: Since biological design is so intricate it requires a designer. […]

dhw: But that is not the problem, as you well know. An even greater mystery than biological design is that of an “eternal mind” that is simply “there”, had no origin, and yet is capable of creating a universe and life and conscious beings like ourselves. Unimaginable.

DAVID: I guess that agnosticism requires a lack of imagination.

dhw: If you can imagine an eternal, unknown, sourceless, undesigned mind capable of creating a whole universe and life and conscious beings like ourselves, although consciousness requires a designer, why shouldn’t someone else imagine an eternal, sourceless, undesigned universe of materials and energy that produces an infinite number of combinations, one of which eventually leads to conditions suitable for life, and eventually to life and to consciousness?

DAVID: So you imagine our reality arising totally by chance in your purposeless theory.

No, I don’t! I’m an agnostic! I’m pointing out that if you can imagine God, then atheists can imagine an impersonal universe chancing on the right formula. I can’t imagine either!

Your gut has a big brain
dhw: [..] The brainy gut is a prime example of how intelligent cells cooperate in order to design functioning communities. (It is possible that your God gave them their intelligence.)

DAVID: I'll accept your possibility about God.

dhw: Good. You can hardly accept the possibility that your God gave them their intelligence without accepting the possibility that they are intelligent.

DAVID: God invented them so of course they act intelligently to fulfill His purposes for them.

We agree that cells cooperate intelligently. But you say they are not intelligent and God tells/has told them what to do. Margulis, McClintock and Shapiro (among others) said/say they are intelligent, and they work out what to do. I guess that’s the end of that discussion, till we discuss it again!