Evolution: early mammals (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, October 28, 2019, 13:50 (1854 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Your theories about God are all reasonable if you assume God didn't really know what He was doing or what purposes He had in mind when He created the universe.

dhw: I gave you alternatives. The first was that he knew exactly what he was doing, and enjoyed experimenting with different life forms, i.e. if he exists, he created the universe and life for his own enjoyment, much as a painter enjoys his own paintings (your very own image). What is wrong with that as a purpose? “Didn’t know what he was doing” is a negative view of my suggestion that if his purpose really was to create a creature that could think like himself, he had to experiment in order to get it. Why is this such anathema to you?

How do you definitely know God thinks like we do? I simply look at what He created with His purpose in mind. The only purpose I see is creation of humans with consciousness, sine we are so different from any other living creation. You reject this by viewing Him with human eyes and mentation. We will never agree on this point as below:

DAVID: The God you describe in these theories is simply a human version of non-God-like humanized God. Every attribute is what an exploring experimenting human might do.

dhw: And according to you, your God “very well could think like us.” That doesn’t mean he’s human, of course. I don’t know of any human who could create a universe.

DAVID: As for your cellular theory, which has to have the ability for creating new complex biochemicals and their complex biochemical reactions with a useful product, it can only be the result of complex instructions. Read James Tour and recognize the extreme difficulty of creating something new in organic chemistry, a job cells do easily all the time. A designer is required.

dhw: Thank you for at last acknowledging that cells can create something new. This is real progress. How they acquired such intelligence is of course a mystery, as are the origin of life and consciousness, but I have always agreed that the intelligent cell may have been designed by your God. I am an agnostic, remember?

I remember. I didn't say cells produce something new. I was describing how cells constantly produce automatically very complex molecules.

dhw: I’ve googled James Tour, and have found an interesting discussion on both sides of the controversy, and it mentions him: clearly he believes in God as the supreme designer, but of course that does not preclude cellular intelligence.
Are Cells Intelligent? - evo2.org
https://evo2.org/cells-intelligent

It also mentions the Nobel prizewinner Barbara McClintock: “The critical factor in evolution was the moment of instantiation of the self-referential cell. How that occurred is unknown, but the fact that cells are self-aware problem-solving agencies cannot be reasonably disputed.”

I'm glad you are researching. Remember my 50/50 possibilities. Cells know what they are doing through feedback loops which are automatic.