More Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Thursday, May 09, 2024, 08:45 (11 days ago) @ David Turell

Early barred spiral galaxies

DAVID: […] Why do you keep asking as if I can explain God's actions simply because I believe in Him? we are not buddies! This is a phony tactic to get me to answers questions I can't answer.

dhw: It’s not a “phony tactic”! If an atheist tells you life arose by chance, do you just swallow the theory or do you ask pertinent questions? The whole purpose of this forum is to discuss all the different theories. […] If you can’t think of any reasons to support your theories, please don’t blame me.

DAVID: There are no reasons to support theories!!! I chose a form of God consistent with the monotheistic Western religions' views.

Did you? Do monotheistic religions tell us God messily, cumbersomely, inefficiently designed 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with his one and only purpose (us and our food)? Do they teach us to doubt whether God wants us to worship him, whether he loves us, or that he allowed/created evil so that we (not to mention himself) wouldn’t be bored, and that he probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours but he certainly doesn’t???

DAVID: It must start with a recognition of a designer who starts out by creating a universe, then creates life beginning as bacteria. Finally, humans….

Once you believe in a God, all this is agreed (though finally is too final, since we have no idea what will evolve in the next few billion years).

DAVID: ….which brings your constant probing questions as to how we relate to Him. That we can answer, but how He relates to us is a big unknown. Only guesses follow.

My “probing questions” relate to your “guesses” about his purpose, methods and nature. Nobody knows what these are, and so we discuss different guesses. You start out with the God you wish for, and complain when I point out that your guesses contradict one another.

Cicadas XIII and XIX appear in same place

DAVID: All of this is highly designed. What produced your massive free-for-all? And why?

dhw: The atheist answer would be chance produced it, and there is no purpose other than that of the organisms themselves, which basically amounts to survival. I have also offered a theistic answer: God would have produced it because, as you pointed out yourself, he wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t enjoyed creating and been interested in his creations. You have agreed that he would have found puppets boring, and so an unpredictable free-for-all would be far more interesting for him to watch. (I have also proposed experimentation, but that would not be a free-for-all.)

DAVID: Back to your totally humanized God who needs unpredictability to avoid boredom! This is not any form of recognizable theism!

Your theory was that your God deliberately allowed/created evil to prevent boredom (not just for us, as you agreed that he would have found puppets boring). My point is the same as yours: puppets do as they’re told; they’re predictable, and unpredictability is more interesting than predictability. Enjoyment and interest do not turn your God into a “totally” human being, and you try to forget your guess that he probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours, and in fact you were certain that these two attributes applied to him. But you’re right: your avoidance-of-boredom explanation of evil - like your inefficient designer of evolution and your might-not-want-to-be-worshipped God - is not taught by Christians, Jews or Muslims. But you have always prided yourself on choosing your own form of God.

Reznick’s guppies

dhw: you and I have long since rejected random mutations as the driving force of macroevolution. We are therefore left with two possible theories: design by your God, or by Shapiro’s cellular intelligence, the source of which could be your God.

DAVID: This is in line with Shapiro's view of DNA controls. The guppies make minor DNA shifts to adapt as necessary.

We are in agreement, though Shapiro's theory extends to major shifts.

A snake feigns death

DAVID: so, it is not just possoms but a whole group of animals using the same convergent mechanism. It is obviously designed into these animals, not a learned instinct.

I don’t understand your conclusion. Convergent evolution occurs when different species come up with the same solution to the same problem, though there is a huge difference between the possum just lying there and all the actions performed by these snakes. It seems to me only common sense that all organisms have strategies for survival, and that once a strategy has proved successful, it will be passed on to later generations. In that case, it becomes a learned instinct. I have no idea why you think it is “obviously designed into them”.

Monkeys on a keyboard

QUOTE: it is very unlikely that chance will produce even a single readable verse of a poem—or any other text—after a finite amount of time.

I have just applied for a grant to do research into how much money is spent on grants to do research into subjects that do not require grants to do research into. All contributions will be welcome.