Life's biologic complexity: Automatic molecular actions (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 01, 2016, 13:08 (2914 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: And I actually find it easier to believe than the idea that they are all machines preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago to choose the right “pathway” for each situation or, just as bizarre, that your God has to keep intervening to show them the way. And we should not forget that much of the time, they don’t actually choose the right “pathway” – hence extinctions, not to mention doctors and undertakers!

DAVID: To remind you the current accepted theory is most extinctions are bad luck, not bad decision making.

dhw: I don’t have a problem with the bad luck theory, since it fits in perfectly with my hypothesis. Last time we had this discussion, you tied yourself in knots trying to explain how the course of evolution was determined by bad luck although God had complete control, which eventually you reduced to a maybe. Do you really want to put yourself through the same contortions again?

DAVID: It was your 'choosing right pathway' comment that set me off. Glad you remembered 'luck' was the proper theory. And God may have arranged for the extinctions.

Bad luck fits in with my hypothetical free-for-all, which could have been engendered by your God giving organisms the means to work out their own “salvation”. But if God may have arranged for the extinctions, they were NOT bad luck, which you now say is the “proper” theory, so you are back to tying yourself in knots.