Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, January 20, 2017, 17:33 (2651 days ago) @ David Turell

David's comment under “biological complexity”): The blood white cells act intelligently. But they are acting under intelligent instructions, not that they are innately intelligent on their own….
dhw: Please explain “under intelligent instructions”. Do you mean your God preprogrammed this intelligent behaviour 3.8 billion years ago, to be passed down by the very first cells, or your God intervenes whenever the cells have a problem?
DAVID: I have the same old problem trying to differentiate between pre-planning or dabbling. No matter, God is in control.

My “same old problem” is that you seem to have your God personally intervening, or loading the first cells with billions of programmes to cope with every difficulty that even the most basic forms of life will ever encounter (not to mention all the innovations and natural wonders of evolution). Bad luck on those that die. The programme never reached them, or perhaps God was too busy that day to come to their aid. There has to be an alternative to this theory. So why not consider the possibility that your God enabled the cells to work out solutions for themselves?

DAVID: I have always said an IM is a possibility, with God watching and in ultimate control. No double standard.

Not “always” in line with my own, but it’s true that you did recently acknowledge that an autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism was possible, with God only intervening if he felt it necessary. My thanks for that. However, you also wrote: “I cannot accept your supposition until a methodology for speciation is found.” The double standard lies in the fact that you DO accept your own hypothesis, although no “methodology for speciation” has been found.

DAVID: Your autonomous IM smells of a way to get rid of God. Maybe, in your view, evolution proceeded with a miraculously appearing IM without God.

How often do I have to repeat that my IM may have been invented by your God? It is an alternative to your preprogramming and dabbling as an explanation of how evolution works, and it’s a poor defence of your hypothesis to claim that my theistic alternative is atheistic.

dhw: Why can’t your God have intensely planned life and then let it continue on its own? Isn’t that precisely what you imagine he has done with humans and their free will?
DAVID: You have introduced consciousness in this suggestion. That is a major different set of circumstances, a non-material state while simple evolution of life is material.

You have missed the point. You refuse to accept the possibility that God might allow life to follow its own course – i.e. that he would sacrifice control. Human free will is an analogy. If he is prepared to let humans do their own thing, why would he not be prepared to let the cells do their own thing? Sacrificing control is the point of the analogy.