Horizontal gene transfer: DNA transfer mechanisms (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, June 24, 2018, 18:53 (2344 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I see absolutely no reason why theists should not believe that their God is capable of giving all these organisms different degrees of intelligence through a brain or brain equivalent, and this actually seems to me far more likely than the theory that their God preprogrammed every natural wonder 3.8 billion years ago or gave personal tuition to each organism involved.

DAVID: We can all assume we know what God can do with his powers, but none of us really know what God can do. We can only judge by analyzing His works and making individual conclusions, which should not include any form of wishful thinking. And we do not know if God's logic is the same as human logic.

dhw: All agreed, but (a) if we are going to discuss these subjects, we have no choice other than to use our human logic, and (b) that does not mean our human logic is wrong! The theistic suggestion that God created the mechanism for an evolutionary free-for-all, though always with the option of dabbling, arises out of consideration of his works, the history of which gives the appearance of an evolutionary free-for-all. Where’s the wishful thinking? The view that every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder has been precisely pre-programmed or dabbled by your God, though 99% of species have disappeared, and somehow they were all specially designed to keep life going until he could produce the brain of Homo sapiens, seems less logical to me, and you can hardly blame me for being dissatisfied with the response that maybe God’s logic is different from ours.

When the current end point of evolution is the human brain, it looks more purposeful than a free-for-all. Your dissatisfaction comes from your point of view, and God's logic still might not be ours, since we must interpret His works from our point of view.