Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 23, 2019, 13:05 (1824 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: "My belief" is not a belief but a logical way that God might have controlled evolution.

dhw: Thank you for reminding me that you do not actually believe in your hypothesis of a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for the whole of life. I can’t say I blame you. I accept, however, that it is a logical way for your God to have controlled evolution. What is not logical is that you consider this to have been a logical way for your God to have fulfilled what you believe to have been his one and only purpose to create H. sapiens. That is why you have no idea why he would have chosen such a method.

DAVID: Your demand that I explain God's choice to use evolution of life as a means of creating humans makes no sense, yet you persist in reverting to it. I don't have to explain it if I simply accept it as the way He did it. I see you as having the problem.

If God exists, he used evolution to create EVERY form of life. You are only prepared to accept your preprogramming/dabbling method (even though it is not a belief), which means he specially designed every life form, including humans. You categorically reject random mutations and cellular intelligence as alternative methods. And so it does not make sense that your God specially preprogrammed all the non-human life forms to keep eating or not eating one another even though – in your hypothesis – he was perfectly capable of specially designing the only thing he wanted to design.

And under “Big brain evolution”, from which this thread seems to have taken over:

DAVID: I accept God and use history to tell me how He chose to do things. Your problem with faith is obvious.

I have no problem with your “accepting” God’s existence. My problem is with your refusal to face the fact that if you have no idea why he would choose the method you attribute to him (preprogramming or dabbling the whole of evolution, though even you do not find it convincing enough to believe) in order to achieve the purpose you attribute to him (producing H. sapiens), there may be a flaw in your interpretation of history.

[…]

DAVID: All of this supports my concept of an early controlling program genetically controlling development with underlying patterns to be followed.

dhw: It supports the concept of genetically controlled development harnessed to environmental conditions, and obviously common descent is sure to follow patterns laid down by earlier forms that evolve into new forms. It offers no support whatsoever to the concept of a divine 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every single bacterial action, evolutionary innovation, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of life past, present and future.

DAVID: I was referring specifically to genetic patterns for form development, not every action in responding to daily activities.

That was a reference to your hypothesis that every single bacterial adaptation is automatic – i.e., the result of the same process of divine preprogramming or dabbling you invoke (but do not believe in) as your counter to cellular intelligence.