Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 24, 2017, 14:29 (2860 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your theistic inventive mechanism constitutes a judgement of God's software writing ability: You want organisms to use His IM sequentially to conduct evolution and I think He could have written the software for all of it from the very beginning. Not double standards but two differing judgments of God's ability.

dhw: My hypothesis has absolutely nothing to do with God’s capabilities. I am simply looking for the most likely explanation of how evolution works, and my theistic version seems to me more logical and infinitely less convoluted than yours. Ah well, this makes a change from the argument that mine is unacceptable because there is no evidence for it, whereas yours is acceptable even though there is no evidence for it. (Double standards.)

DAVID: Since the full scope of God's abilities are not known to either of us, each of us is allowed to have our own concept of those abilities. No double standard, just a difference in opinion. I am allowed to differ from your approach from the picket fence.

Yes to all of that. But the disagreement here is not over God’s abilities or over my agnosticism. It is over 1) different interpretations of how your God might organize evolution (no double standards), and 2) your non-acceptance of my hypothesis because there is no evidence, whereas you accept your own although there is no evidence. Double standards. But this is peanuts compared to the next convolution:

BBELLA: Why would God have to use an inventive mechanism or write the software for all life, when he could just BE the IM (I AM) and/or BE the software?
DAVID: That is part of my dilemma: God could have written all the software in the genome in the beginning of life or He could ride herd and originate every step forward. Either way He is in total control, of which fact I am convinced.

If you agree with BBella that your God could actually BE the inventive mechanism inside every organism, you have just added to your dilemma. You claim that some organisms may look as if they’re intelligent, but you don’t accept that they are, or that they could be intelligent enough to do their own inventing. Apparently, however, they clearly are intelligent and even inventive enough to do their own inventing so long as we call that intelligence “God” instead of an inventive mechanism possibly invented by your God. (Presumably the 99% extinction rate would then count as divine species suicide rather than natural death, since your God is always in control.)

BBella’s suggestion need not involve God at all if we apply my version of panpsychism to all organisms. Then each one has its own individual “intelligence”, which may or may not be adaptable or creative. In my view just as likely and just as unlikely as any other hypothesis.