Watching asteroids; possible damage (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, March 10, 2017, 01:47 (2817 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: If he “discovers limits”, then he is experimenting, which was the second alternative I offered you, i.e. he wanted to produce a being with consciousness like his own, but he didn’t know how to do it (as opposed to his knowing it all in advance, and only dabbling if organisms needed “correcting”).

I don't view it as experimenting. His purpose is always before Him as He oversees the evolution. If you study planetary theory, it is explained that Earth and the other three inner metallic/rocky planets were formed by being bombarded by bodies (planetismals). What is left over are the asteroids from the original planetary disc around the sun. The method God chose was limited in the sense that asteroids were left over, and the other possible reason for our danger is that the asteroids were required to remain. Remember, in my approach I ignore the Bible's description of absolutely all-powerful.

dhw: If you are now claiming that his production of bad things (I include natural disasters and disease as well as human nastiness under the broad category of “evil”) may have been unintentional, then it rings pretty hollow when you criticize other concepts of God as being un-Godlike (see below). Of course, you have every right to use your human judgement in contemplating your God’s possible powers and nature, and so do I.

Yes, we both use human judgement, but your constant humanizing is not equal to the possibility that God must put up with some unintended consequences. See Tony's comment.

DAVID: I view that thought as very narrow reasoning.

dhw: Why is it narrow reasoning to inquire into God’s possible motives, attitudes and nature, but it is not narrow reasoning to say that he does not have a “smidgen” of evil in him (as if you knew him personally) but he may have been powerless to avoid the evil consequences of his quest to produce humans?

No human knows a personage like God. Free will has consequences. Should God have made us all saints with limited emotions?

dhw: you have offered some thoughts as to why he produced humans: 1) he wanted a relationship with us (but keeps himself hidden from us and doesn’t have any human attributes for us to relate to); 2) he wants to watch us solve the problems he couldn’t solve himself (but we mustn’t call that a spectacle). What else have you offered?

It is your spectacle, not mine. Why must you know why He wanted to create us. Isn't the fact of our creation, enough? If He didn't do it, who would?

dhw: I don’t know why you call your faith in your evolutionary scenario “developed” when you admit that you wander all over the place in trying to justify it,

DAVID: On the contrary I've firmly stated God uses evolutionary processes to create.

dhw: But you wander all over the place (your own expression) when you try to explain why he had to design every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct to keep life going until he was able to dabble with the pre-human brain, or pre-humans were able to switch on his 3.8-billion-year-old programme for brain enlargement.

I'm not wondering. You keep denying my reasonable theory that a balance of nature is required. And his dabble is identified:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/evolving-a-human-brain?utm_source=Today+in+Cosmos+Ma...

"Charrier and her team found that introducing the human backup gene, SRGAP2C, delayed the maturation so spines kept sprouting, which enabled them to make more connections. The experiment showed how, through the copying and then tweaking of a single gene, evolution increased the circuit complexity of the human brain.

"The latest work follows a similar plot line. Marta Florio, a PhD student in the Huttner lab studied another backup copy of a gene that is present in humans but absent from chimps and mice. It is called ARHGAP11B. When the human version was introduced into developing mice, it caused a particular population of brain stem cells – basal radial glia – to increase their rounds of multiplication. Not only did mice double the number of these stem cells in some cases their ballooning brains started folding to fit into the skull – just as the brains of primates do.

"That finding was reported in Science in 2015. The latest finding is that just a single letter change in the ARHGAP11B DNA is able to increase the multiplication of basal radial glia."

Comment: Whole article is worth reading.