Explaining natural wonders: bacterial intelligence (Animals)

by David Turell , Saturday, June 10, 2017, 19:30 (2722 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: It all makes perfect 'jointed' sense if you accept that God is in control, uses evolutionary processes to produce His desires, of which humans are the primary goal. He prefers a bush of life which provides energy for evolution of life to continue for very long periods. He evolved the universe and the current condition of the Earth. Do you accept that approach as reasonable?

dhw: But you have told us that God might not be in control of the dangerous universe and the nasty bacteria and various other “accidents”. So he’s in control but he’s not in control. Yes, if he exists, we agree that he uses evolutionary processes to produce his desires, but what ARE his desires, and how do they fit in with the history of life as we know it? One moment you say humans are his only purpose, the next they are his primary purpose, and sometimes it's just "a" purpose, but whichever it is, even you don’t know why he bothered to design all those pre-whales, let alone the actual whale. Not much of a link there, according to you. Yes, we agree that he would have created a system that led to a bush of life, and to life continuing for a long time, but that has nothing to do with the production of homo sapiens. It would still apply if humans had never walked the planet and if they ceased to walk the planet tomorrow. And yes, if he exists, he would have created the universe and the Earth and life itself and the mechanisms for evolution. But colliding galaxy clusters (no doubt more to come 2.4 billion years from now), bacterial diseases, dangerous asteroids, the all-important weaverbird’s nest, and all those pre-humans and different branches of humans just because he who is in control only wanted to produce homo sapiens? No, I don’t see that as “perfect jointed sense”.

DAVID: Your view is the difference between belief and non-belief. I explain God and his motives from the facts I see.

dhw: The above has nothing to do with belief and non-belief. These discussions are a joint quest to find some kind of explanation for all the mysteries with which we are confronted. In emphasizing the complexities of living organisms, you do a magnificent job in putting the case for your God’s existence, but when it comes to guessing at his motives and methods, your arguments seem to me to be full of holes. These are not filled by claiming that you are a believer and I am an agnostic. I have even offered a theistic alternative which you agreed DID fit the facts as we see them!

My explanations of His motives are methods are just guesses, based on my beliefs about his capabilities and his thoughts about us. We've been over this many times.