More about how evolution works: multicellularity (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, November 05, 2016, 12:31 (2938 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: As for your hypothesis which is obviously anthropomorphic, I see purpose, not a spectacle for enjoyment.
dhw: This is a total non sequitur. The purpose you see is your hidden God designing every form of life and natural wonder in order to produce humans so that they and he can have what you call direct relations. (You refuse to answer how one can have direct relations with a hidden being.) Enjoyment IS a purpose, and it would explain why your God remains hidden and why he might invent a mechanism that provides the unpredictability so essential to a good story.

DAVID: We don't know God's nature. You've admitted that. Enjoyment is a human emotion. I don't even know if God loves us. I've said that. He may be emotionless. As for relating to him, what about prayer? It is you who humanizes him! See you comment below:

The moment we start to speculate about God’s purpose, we are bound to humanize him! God creating life in order to produce humans so that he can have direct relations with us is humanizing him. God hiding himself in order to test our faith is humanizing him. What is the point of prayer if you are praying to something that has no attributes and with which we have no common ground, as you state below? He wouldn’t even understand what we were saying or what we were talking about if there was no common ground. You dismiss my hypothesis, complaining that none of the mainstream religions support it. Please tell me which of the mainstream religions advocates a God without any human attributes.

dhw:”Anthropomorphic” is a non argument. Nobody knows God's true nature, if he exists, but many of the religious books you have read will tell you that “God created man in his own image” (Genesis 6). That's as good a speculation as any, and your idea of having relations with God presupposes common ground, doesn’t it?

DAVID: Again, common ground with God does not exist! That was explained to Abraham. I am in His image, as you know I believe, through consciousness only.

Consciousness without attributes may as well not be there. It is you who constantly bring up the subject of God’s purpose, but why talk about purpose at all, since purposefulness is a human attribute?

DAVID: Your hypothesis does not accept God…..

If we are talking about God’s possible purpose, it’s pretty difficult to leave out God!

DAVID: …humanizes Him, and thinks survival and improvement are necessary drives for bacteria, which have needed no for help to go into every weird environment. And it is obvious that 'natural chance' evolution never needed human to appear.

All covered above. Improvement is NOT necessary!

dhw: But you have missed the whole point. He can sacrifice control if he wants to (and will fully know what he is doing). My hypothesis is that he did precisely that, because the unpredictable is more enjoyable than the predictable. You believe he gave humans free will. That is the same process of sacrificing control. I presume you think he did so because he wanted to test their faith in him. How anthropomorphic is that!
DAVID: Again, giving God emotions and humanizing Him. Of course He can loosen controls. He did give us free will, but I view it as a challenge, not a test of faith. Again you have proposed He 'wants'. He's never told us. You are continuously humanizing Him.

A challenge to do what? But again you have missed the point. You wrote that I was “anthropomorphizing him by suggesting He can lose control”, and my point was that he can sacrifice control if he wants to. As regards “humanizing”, see above. According to you he wants to challenge us, wants to have direct relations with us, wants to test our faith, but you simply leave out the word “want”.

dhw: Secondly, if he is in tight control, don’t tell me that the organisms which he designed and which died through being “inadequate for the stress” (your words) were not designed in such a way that they were inadequate for the stress!...
DAVID: Your interpretation is not incorrect. My point is organisms are adapted for current stresses if they are surviving at the time. Of course, God can change the stresses.

I don’t think anyone could possibly disagree that if organisms survive, they are adapted for current stresses. And if they don’t survive, they are not adapted. But thank you for accepting the correctness of my argument.