Unanswered questions (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, June 01, 2019, 15:12 (2000 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Semi-autonomous applies only to the mechanism you imagine God might have given to organisms so they can speciate.

dhw: Since you insist that your God either preprogrammed or personally dabbled every innovation, please specify precisely what half of the process of speciation is autonomous.

DAVID: I use semi-autonomous in the sense that it is totally controlled by guidelines, when an organism initiates the process.

dhw: How does an organism initiate the process if it is “totally controlled by guidelines”? According to you, all the changes take place before they are actually needed – either through dabbling or through a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme. So does the organism say to itself: “Oh, I’m going to have to enter the water. Let me switch on God’s legs-into-flippers programme”? Or does it cry out to God: “Help, I’m going to have to enter the water! Please come and dabble me some flippers”? If not, once more: please tell us which half of the process is autonomous.

'Semi-" means the organism has some options: it can initiate the process of a new form, but it must follow design requirements. I'm trying to interpret your IM theories in terms of the God I envision.

DAVID: You make a constant note that species come and go. Succumbing to environmental changes is part of the pattern of evolution.

dhw: Of course it is, and it makes nonsense of the claim that your in-control God specially designed all the different species extant and extinct if he only wanted to design one species, namely H. sapiens. And please tell us how he remains in “firm control” if he does not “control the very thing which his innovations were designed in advance to cope with” – namely changing environmental conditions. Does he keep permanent watch on a crystal ball?

DAVID: The usual complaint ignoring the point that if God started life and wished to create humans He chose an evolutionary process on exhibit in history. He had the right to choose His method! I do not know how much control God kept on environmental changes, but I think He evolved our special Earth to support life.

dhw: If he exists, then of course he evolved Earth to support life, but you wrote (25 May): “the various massive ice ages which did not deter hominin development suggest He did not control local environment”, so you are at least prepared to accept the possibility that your God was not in full control. I am not questioning the fact that evolution happened, and if God exists he clearly wanted and invented the process of evolution. But...as follows:
Dhw: Yet again: Why did he specially design billions of life forms etc. if he only wanted to design H. sapiens? You simply refuse to acknowledge that it is the combination of your different hypotheses that renders them incongruous.

DAVID: Nothing incongruous if you believed in the power of God. You are arguing God should not have chosen to evolve humans. Why shouldn't He have chosen this method?

dhw: According to you, evolve = specially design, and neither you nor I can understand why if he ONLY wanted to specially design humans, he specially designed millions of non-human life forms, econiches, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct. You can’t explain this incongruity, so maybe he did not ONLY want to design humans, or he did not specially design all the millions of life forms etc. Please stop isolating your hypotheses when you know it is their COMBINATION that is incongruous.

I would love to meet your incongruity. It is entirely invisible to me. How do we get from the first life to humans? By evolution of forms though speciation, which I claim is the result of God's actions. God created all of evolution finally reaching humans. The thought comes from our knowledge of how we arrived. Again, your confused thinking seems to need a God who directly creates humans and also evolves the rest of the bush of life as after thoughts. His control of evolution had a direction and a purpose at the moment He produced first life.