Purpose and design (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, April 23, 2017, 02:00 (2770 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The early unicellular organisms had to have the ability to respond to stresses beyond the simple adaptive mechanisms we know about. Their innate mechanisms are not up to the task of multicellular speciation. I my view that requires god.

dhw: Your argument was that humans did not arise in response to natural challenges, and – by some weird twisted logic – that means they were God’s purpose. Clearly multicelullarity was not needed for survival, and so the argument applies to ALL multicellular organs. Now you are shifting your ground and saying that ALL multicellular organisms required God’s programming or dabbling. In that case, you can’t use the “natural challenges” argument to support your claim that non-necessity proves that humans were the only goal.

Good point. I was twisting Darwin's argument. God guides evolution and causes speciation. Once again, 23 million years ago only certain organisms began to progress to humans. Everyone else stayed the same. Something or someone pushed that line to complexify so much. I choose God over chance.

dhw: It is straightforward reasoning to say that the mechanisms are too complex to have arisen by chance and so required a designer, but your insistence that the designer had humans as his ONLY goal has resulted in one irrational hypothesis after another (see below).
DAVID: Irrational only to you, since you are unwilling to understand the marked difference in kind of humans

dhw: I have never denied the marked difference between our degree of consciousness and that of other animals, or between parts of our anatomy and those of other animals. But that does not mean your God designed the weaverbird’s nest in order to keep life going for our sake or to provide food for us.

The weaverbird bird belongs to an eco-niche that supplies food to someone, and eventually some of what is eaten becomes our food. We do eat that bird nest.

dhw: Debate on God’s “goal” cannot exclude debate on his reasons or thought, and unknowability and humanization are no excuse for embracing illogicality at the expense of hypotheses that make sense. “Why don’t you realize that point?”
DAVID: We can muse about his thoughts, but why try if we have no way of knowing what is correct? What will that discussion tell us?

dhw: Why muse about the existence of God, the origin of life and the universe, what happened before the big bang (if the big bang ever happened), the nature and origin of consciousness, the possibility of an afterlife, if we have no way of “knowing” what is correct? One moment you are telling us “the only way to study Him is through his creations”, and the next moment you tell us there is no point in trying to study him. You use unknowability as your escape route whenever I point out the illogicality of your own personal reading of your God’s mind.

We can muse and discuss whatever has some scientific factual substance. Your comment: "next moment you tell us there is no point in trying to study him" is not consistent with my statements. I have always said study Him through His works. Many of us can certainly see His purpose, even if you cannot..