Evolution, survival and adaptation (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, September 15, 2017, 13:29 (2624 days ago) @ David Turell

Once again I am telescoping threads.

Dhw (under “misfolded protein problems”): It is because we don’t know about lots of things that we formulate hypotheses. Yours seem to change from day to day. You now seem to be taking it for granted that God has limits. Not so long ago, he was all-powerful and always in control. Why not acknowledge the possibility (which is all it can be) that what we have IS God’s goal – namely, a massive free-for-all, full of nice and nasty, good and evil, joy and sadness, birth and death, extinction and survival?

DAVID: Obviously I don't see that your conclusion fits the arrival of H. sapiens, but yours does include free will and the chaos it creates. Birth and death, extinctions are requirements of evolution. Your view of God's limits may be requirements of evolving life as a method of creation. As for my apparent changeability, it is the result of your probing questions, requiring me to explore my own theories and consolidate ideas.

Not a conclusion but a hypothesis, and these are not my views of your God’s limits. They are yours, as you constantly shift your ground. My proposal is that your God is NOT limited, and that he deliberately created a free-for-all, i.e. did not WANT to control every twist and turn of evolution. This removes all the convolutions that arise from your anthropocentrism, which is the theory you want to consolidate but can’t. So I am simply asking you to consider an alternative.

DAVID: What doesn't fit your theory is the obvious driven portion of evolution. The bush of hominins leading to sapiens has no underlying apparent causative drive, but in the DNA of these folks are found hot spots of mutations, noted in a previous entry. Why not a God who drives evolution? After all He created a life-giving universe. If He has that power why stop and watch as you imply?

My theory is that evolution is driven by the twin fuels of survival and improvement. There is a perfectly natural progression from use of tools to use of more sophisticated tools to ways of making life more comfortable to ways of making life even more comfortable. This doesn’t solve the great mystery of consciousness, which I accept might stem from a God. As for stopping and watching, it is you who tell us that your God is hidden. Of course he has the power to do what he likes, so ask yourself why there is a higgledy-piggledy bush instead of a straight line to Homo sapiens, and why your God hides, and maybe the answer is that he wanted a higgledy-piggledy bush and once he had set the wheels in motion, he wanted to stop and watch. If he exists, he’s created a great show.