Genome complexity: epigenetics in action (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, April 09, 2017, 09:27 (2564 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I’m afraid I can see no coherent logic in the hypothesis that God had only one purpose in life, namely to produce humans - which he could do “without any difficulty” - but chose first to specially design millions of other organisms and lifestyles and natural wonders (then get rid of 99% of them), such as the weaverbird’s nest and the monarch’s four-generational migration and the fly’s compound eye, in order to provide energy to keep life going until he produced the one organism he actually wanted to produce.
DAVID: The issue involved far more evidence than you list. One must look at the end product, the human being: the useful hands, the upright posture, the giant brain with its unexplained consciousness and capacity for complex planning, the rapid evolution when its brother organisms sat still. You either recognize the importance or you sluff it off. I see only purpose and directionality in the history. You are blinded by the side issue of natures wonders and the balance of nature which we agree only supplies energy so evolution can take a long time to reach the end point. Perhaps you should stick with your human chauvinism complaints as an excuse to avoid the obvious.

You seem to have missed the point here, and yet grasped it on the “Purpose and design” thread! I have never denied the skills and the levels of consciousness that distinguish us from our fellow animals, and all my hypotheses allow for the possibility that your God has dabbled. The point at issue is not lack of purpose, but your dogmatic claim that humans were your God’s ONLY PURPOSE and “everything else” was related to that. I absolutely do not agree with the purpose you have assigned to the energy supply! Your God is apparently now saying to himself: “All I want to do is produce humans, which I can do without difficulty, but first I’ll design the weaverbird’s nest and lots and lots of other natural wonders, so that it will take me a long time to produce the only thing I really want to produce.” I’m sorry, but this sounds pretty silly to me.

BBella: So, by saying, "God showed the bird how to create it, probably by giving the bird a design to follow", it sounds as though you are pretty much saying God did send him to bird school! […]
David: I'm not sure about bird school. The design was more likely implanted into the bird's genome where it acted as an instinct.

So you’re not sure your God didn’t hold courses on nest-building, and presumably on butterfly migration, fishy camouflage, waspy parasitism etc. so that it would take a long time for him to produce humans. Until now, though, you have only offered preprogramming and dabbling, so the “more likely” explanation is that 3.8 billion years ago he said: “I only want to create humans, which I can do without any difficulty, but first I’ll preprogramme the weaverbird’s nest and lots and lots of other natural wonders so that it will take me longer to produce the only thing I want to produce.” You "see only purpose", and the purpose you see for all the natural wonders is for God to put off doing the one thing he wants to do! Fortunately, our discussions take a different turn under “Purpose and design”.