Natures wonders: squid eye lens focuses exactly (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, August 14, 2017, 13:07 (2656 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I am not disputing the complexity of the squid’s eye. You will not dispute the complexity of an ant city. I am proposing that both are originally invented by communities pooling their intelligence: cells and ants. I accept that it is only a hypothesis, but I do not accept your authoritative statement that the hypothesis is wrong and cells do not self-organize or invent. It certainly fits the history of evolution better than the hypothesis that your God preprogrammed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder 3.8 billion years ago, or personally dabbled them all, in order to fulfil his one and only purpose of producing the human brain.

DAVID: Your prejudice against an all powerful God is shown in your statement. He fits the history of evolution even better than your intelligence from no-where committee of cells. Why shouldn't an all-powerful God do all the dabbling He wants? After all He made the universe, set up our galaxy with the perfect planet for life, started life and controlled its evolution of the most complex article in existence, the human brain. All you offer as a cause is chance or panpsychism, a second rate theory about a form of universal consciousness. God is the first-rate form. Yes, you say God is possible. Why not probable?

Where on earth do you find prejudice against an all-powerful God? Your theory is that an all-powerful God pre-programmed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder for the sole purpose of producing the human brain. I don't see why an all-powerful God would have needed the great higgledy-piggledy bush if all he wanted was to produce the human brain. Therefore an all-powerful God may have had a different purpose. An all-powerful God may have deliberately created a mechanism which would of its own accord produce the great higgledy-piggledy bush, because what he wanted was a great higgledy-piggledy bush. But he could have dabbled at any time, and maybe the human brain was the result of a dabble. In this part of the discussion I am challenging your interpretation of your all-powerful God’s purpose and method.

The question of God’s existence is a different topic. I find all the hypotheses (chance, God and panpsychist evolution) equally difficult to believe. That does not disqualify me from challenging the logic of your anthropocentric interpretation of a possible God’s evolutionary motives and methods.