Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, January 12, 2015, 17:07 (3603 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You have cut out the alternative which followed the quote: “...Or he might have specially created the duck-billed platypus. Or there might be some strange way in which matter generated its own intelligence, with the same result.”-DAVID: We've covered strange life forms before. I've explained that as a need for balance in nature since everyone has to eat someone. -No they don't. Plenty of life forms are vegetarian. I remain unconvinced that the duck-billed platypus is essential to fulfilling your God's purpose of creating humans.-DAVID: Also I've told you that life is obviously very inventive, from the information it works with. -And I've told you that life is not inventive. Only living things can invent, which means only organisms can contain and work with information, and that in turn means that they must also contain a mechanism (God-given or not) which enables them to innovate. It therefore remains a mystery why your God should have preprogrammed or specially created the duck-billed platypus when what he really wanted apparently was human beings.
 
DAVID: As for matter generating information in a strange way, yes, that is enormously strange. No one can point to information generated by matter in our reality. You are being very inventive to avoid the issue of the origin of information. Only a mental state, an originating intellect can do this.-If a mental state (God) can have no origin, you can hardly argue that mental states have to be originated by a mental state. No-one can “point to information” generated by an eternal mind. The fact of the matter is that the information is there and we do not know its source. All hypotheses are therefore “enormously strange”.
 
dhw: You seem to have decided to abandon the “key point” which forms the subject of this thread, but perhaps you feel you are on safer ground with your old friends information, and chance v. design.
DAVID: The key point is I maintain humans are obviously different in kind, and only guidance by God can help evolution to do that.-Words like “obviously” carry no weight when the statement itself is so open to question.
 
dhw: Of course he doesn't say God did it. And I have never said initial information was not required. Nor have I ever said that God did not provide it (or did provide it - I'm an agnostic!). Nobody knows where it came from. That is the great mystery which you think you have solved through conjuring up another great mystery: an infinite and eternal mind from nowhere.
DAVID: I understand your objections, but only an intellect can create information. So I am left with the only logical choice I see, an eternal mind.-I'm glad you understand my objections. I also understand why you have reached your conclusions.