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

by dhw, Saturday, December 17, 2016, 13:47 (2898 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The whale series has eight or nine forms, the first of which prepared them for the water. Later forms were fully aquatic. God's stepwise control.

dhw: Didn’t God know how to make a “proper” whale right from the start? Ditto a “proper” human? Why these “itty-bitty” steps (your favourite criticism of Darwinism)? Why so much trouble over trying to perfect the whale when all God wanted was humans? It puzzles you, but your puzzlement doesn’t make you doubt your reading of God’s mind.

DAVID: God used an evolutionary process which requires steps, as we see. As for Darwin, his theory requires itty-bitty steps, which don't exist, as he hoped they would to explain the Cambrian his biggest worry about his theory.

So once again: why do you think God took so much trouble over trying to perfect the whale when all he wanted was humans? And please don’t say “balance of nature”, which you have agreed means nothing more than life goes on, without or without humans.

dhw: So maybe his aim was not simply to produce humans. Maybe his aim was to allow his initial mechanism to produce a vast variety of life forms, and pre-whales worked out their own step-by-step improvements. Humans may have been an afterthought. Or maybe he just kept experimenting in the hope of coming up with a fully conscious mind like his own (just as our robot-makers are trying to do).

DAVID: He certainly did come up with conscious beings, His obvious purpose.

I am not doubting the fact that humans are here. So are the duckbilled platypus and the weaverbird’s nest. The afterthought/experiment hypotheses allow for your God’s deliberate production of humans, while also explaining the vast variety of life forms extinct and extant which were and are irrelevant to the creation of humans and which cause you such puzzlement. What are your objections to these two theistic hypotheses?