horizontal gene transfer: the real IM? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 20, 2014, 18:40 (3407 days ago) @ dhw

dhw;Amazingly for someone who claims never to imagine what God might think, you tell us that he preprogrammed all the innovations and complex lifestyles 3.7 billion years ago for the purpose of creating humans.... But we mustn't ask ourselves what he might have done before he created this universe.-We can only know about God's probable intentions from the point where time began. There we have a degree of evidence. I'm glad you can think about the pre-time era. You do it either to get confused about issues or to keep your mind occupied. To me it makes no sense to go back there.
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> dhw: Luckily for me, I don't know what that means, and dictionary definitions don't help much, except that they all involve making connections. That is one of the eye-opening things about our forum: everybody looks at the world, and makes different connections.-Don't ask. It is a medical school joke involving an impossible ano-buccal anastomosis.-
> dhw: I have explicitly stated many times, including in my post of yesterday, that I do not accept the something from nothing theory.-Only desperate atheists do it. -> dhw but you are only willing to explore one explanation of its origins, and when you are confronted with the sheer unimaginableness and totally unscientific nature of that explanation, your response is: “One must jump the chasm to faith.”-That is why is described as a chasm.
 
> DAVID: But semi-autonomous fits my concept of theistic evolution. You see my mind works authoritatively. You are the fuzzy one, with options in every possible direction.
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> dhw: Yes, I see different options. My "fuzziness" is due to the fact that I do not have a fixed concept to which I can try to fit the evidence. I look at the evidence and try to find concepts that fit. Alas, so far none of them do.-You still have it bass-ackwards. The evidence strongly points to a planning consciousness.