More Denton: Reply to David (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, August 18, 2015, 16:35 (3385 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: If you acknowledge that survival is a purpose in itself, is it not possible that improvement might also be a purpose in itself, and that your God might have endowed the first living cells with the wherewithal to survive and improve without having to serve the purpose of providing humans with food some 3.79 billion years later? -Why have single cells survive and improve unless the process is directed somewhere. I see purpose where you don't.-
> DAVID: Again my point that God is probably fully aware of consequences.
> 
> To be fully aware of the consequences, he would have had to forecast all the uncontrolled environmental changes billions of years beforehand so that he could preprogramme the first cells to pass down all the automatic responses that enabled some organisms to survive while the rest perished. If he didn't do so, he was relying on luck.-Of course that is the alternative.
> 
> DAVID: Bacteria live in all extreme environments because their adaptability allows than to do so. On this we both agree. I still think onboard information can handle all of it.
> 
> dhw: “Onboard information” sounds much more feasible than millions of tiny computer programmes for every eventuality, but that's what it means, since you insist that bacteria are automatons that can only obey God's instructions.-That is my view.