Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, October 28, 2016, 12:50 (2949 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The fact that evolution can advance through horizontal gene transfer has absolutely no bearing on whether your God pre-programmed/dabbled organisms or endowed them with the ability to negotiate their own gene swapping.

DAVID: Did organisms learn to gene swap, or did God give them the ability from the beginnng? That is my point.

Maybe once the process had started, organisms learned from one another – as no doubt they do when any process or “natural wonder” has proved useful. How did it start? Your God setting it up, a lucky break, a couple of bright little critters having a bright idea? Who knows?

dhw:I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep going back to earlier posts, as these will only lead us back to the same arguments. However, it’s a good way of distracting attention from the latest unfathomable logic by which your God meticulously plans luck.

DAVID: Raup used 'luck' to make his point about accidental extinctions, by which happenstance most of them occurred that way. He never discussed God, but God managing environment is possible in the theistic world.

When I pointed out that the extinction of “less adequate” species did not explain why your God had preprogrammed them in the first place, you quoted Raup’s “bad luck” as the reason for their extinction. When I pointed out that bad luck does not sound like meticulous planning, you suggested God had “sized” Chicxulub, which = God’s meticulous planning and not bad luck. This is always the problem when you impose an illogical pattern on evolution: it just doesn’t fit, and so you are forced into illogicality, the upshot of which is that you say you can’t always follow God’s logic – whereas it is your own logic you can’t follow!