Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, January 27, 2017, 00:53 (2858 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: If God is the IM He is in total control, as I've agreed. No chance involved. I'm the one who raises the issue of pre-planning or dabbling since I can see the possibility of both. Free-wheeling autonomous IM's are not in my considerations, ever! You are the one finding dilemmas for me!

dhw: You quite rightly say that the outward appearance of intelligence does not prove that an organism is intelligent – it could be a robot, obeying instructions. (That also applies to humans.) In the case of bacteria, you resolutely reject the very possibility of autonomous intelligence. However, if you accept the possibility that your God IS the IM inside every organism, then you must accept the possibility that the outward intelligence of bacteria IS intelligence. It’s your God responding, for example, to each challenge as it arises, or exploiting each opportunity – but directly from inside each organism. And since some bacteria fail to adapt while others succeed, and the same applies to all species (with a 99% extinction rate), you’ll have to agree that the divine IM works differently in individual organisms as well as in different species. Therefore each IM is an autonomous piece of your God. And you can’t possibly tell the difference between it being an autonomous piece of your God and an autonomous intelligence invented by your God. And so, according to you, an autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism is possible if God IS the mechanism, but it’s "not in your considerations, ever!" if God has invented it. I wouldn’t call that a dilemma. I’d call it disjointed thinking.

I read the whole paragraph and agreed with it until the final bit. Of course it is possible God is in everything, or that He could invent an inventive mechanism itself as His double ganger. As the first possibility has Him in total control, why should He produce an IM that is totally autonomous, giving up that total control? That is your disjoined thinking.