DILEMMAS: A Response to DHW (Evolution)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Monday, November 10, 2014, 04:14 (3665 days ago) @ dhw

DHW: God's preprogramming and/or dabbling would appear to have been highly ineffective in those cases... Why do you think your God planned for all those species to “explode” onto the Cambrian scene and then depart so (relatively) soon? 
> -I just wanted to chime in on this point here, because it is one that has been raised many times, despite what I think is a sufficient reasonable explanation. Your primary question, and please correct me if I am mistaken, is:-If God is knowledgeable and powerful enough to create all of this, why didn't he create it de nihilo plene in extremis (Out of nothing fully formed in its final state).-First, I think the question deserves another question in response:-If we can create a computer program from scratch, why don't we create them straight into their final state and just skip all that intermediary stuff?-Your secondary question, which is causative related to the first, is:-If God is knowledgeable and powerful enough to create all of this, why create intermediaries that he knew would have to be destroyed?-
The simple answer is, you don't do it because you can't and it has nothing to do with power or knowledge. Without the laws of physics, the computer won't run. Without the hardware, the software won't run. Without the BIOS, the OS won't run. Without the OS, the other software won't run. What good is writing the software for a OS, BIOS, and PC that do not exist? You can plan them all in advance, you could even, to an extent, implement them in some form or fashion in advance(jotting down the code in your notebook, for example). Yet, unless each stage is already in existence and running you can not implement the next stage. -Now, as it applies directly to Earth and living species, consider this. What if the end goal was not one lonely planet with a few million species in the middle of a vast and otherwise empty universe? What if the plan was a vast universe teaming with near infinite variety of life?-The reason these two questions are of utmost importance is that it goes back to the order of the way things were created. IF the plan was to create just the Earth, and just the (relatively) few species that live on it, then why create the rest of the Universe at all? He probably could have gotten away with a small galaxy and just tweaked the parameters accordingly. But if the plan was much, much bigger than that, then that would require intermediary steps. -The laws of physics dictate how electronics work, but they do not specify a strict TYPE of computer that we can create, nor do they explicitly dictate the way that they are constructed or how they function. Just look at the huge strides that we have made since the old vacuum tube computers! Similarly, the laws of physics do not dictate a specific type of planet that will be generated. They impose limits and constraints while allowing for variation.-The very mechanisms that allow for variation DEMAND 'post-processing'. To go back to our computer analogy, the software that runs between the hardware and operating system (called the BIOS) performs conditioning that allows for the OS to interact with the hardware. This can't run until the computer is powered on. More tellingly, one of the things that happens when you turn on your computer is that it "sets the environmental variables". In the case of the earth, this would have been the microbial life that forms the foundation of all life on this planet. It acts as a interface layer, a conditioning layer, between higher lifeforms and the environment, and quite literally sets the environmental variables necessary to sustain higher life.-And now we come to the tell-tale part of our analogy. Once the computer boots up, and the new environment is configured, do you think that the work is done? No! Once the OS is up and running, other software will start. Some of it will run non-stop until the computer shuts down, others will only start up, run their required program, and switch back off. Does that make them any less meaningful? Not at all. If those programs had not done their work, the program that is running today simply could not have functioned properly.-This is where evolution fails us. Instead of looking for WHY these things existed, what their purpose was, we try to understand HOW they existed. In confuses the priorities and leads to a segmented and skewed perception of the world. Of course, this segmentation was the prime principle of the reductionist mentality which still rules supreme today.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.