David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, April 06, 2020, 20:19 (1690 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Monday, April 06, 2020, 20:33

dhw: I have edited your response to enable us to deal with the salient points.

DAVID: […] my initial simplistic answer was preprogramming […] The second stated method for God is hands-on direct creation of all stages, a form of constant dabbling. […] We currently cannot find any way the genome is coded to speciate. It might be found, but seems very unlikely to me, with no hints in sight. Which brings me to a current conclusion, mentioned over and over: God does all new speciation Himself, and preprogramming is, therefore, very limited as a technique.

dhw: Dabbling = direct creation, so you are clearly opting for biblical creationism (= the different species of living things were separately created by God, as opposed to their having evolved). I don’t have a problem with this as your faith, but it somewhat contradicts your message to me a couple of days ago: “Note religions will give you all the answers you want, all from human reasoning. I carefully avoid that approach […].” You haven’t said whether you think temperature sensing was preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or directly created.

As I have declared God is in charge of running the process of evolution, of course He is direct control of each step, and over time I've changed my guesses to appreciate more direct dabbling occurred than to preprogramming. Some preprogramming is likely but limited. The bold above really answers your temperature sensing question. God designed it. As for direct creation (DC), I mentioned it as an answer to your weird objection to God taking His time to create us. I view DC in two ways: the Bible says a mistranslated seven days. Really seven eons! So DC is in two references: immediate creation of everything at once, or delayed stepwise DC over the 3.8 billion years required

DAVID: A fully purposeful God with exact goals in mind will not allow any other approach, such as the dhw suggestion of giving the organisms means of evolving. That means God gives up some/ or in large part directional control of evolution. [...]My conclusion is the evidence supports a God who is extremely purposeful.

dhw: Who in his right mind would believe in a God who created the universe and life without having a purpose? This whole discussion is about your restriction of God’s purpose in creating billions of years’ worth of non-human life forms etc., extant and extinct, to the production of H. sapiens. (And you don’t even want to speculate on your extremely purposeful God’s purpose in producing H. sapiens!) Here is another theistic theory for you: God doesn’t want to spend eternity thinking about himself. And so he has an idea: a vast variety of living things whose forms and behaviours will give him an endless source of interest, e.g. enjoyment, as a painter enjoys his paintings (D. Turell). These include humans capable of questioning him, of passing tests like dealing with nasty viruses (D. Turell), or of admiring his work (D. Turell), or of having a relationship with him (D. Turell). Part of his interest lies in unpredictability – a world of automatic puppets would be as boring as sitting in eternal isolation - and so although he reserves the right to dabble, he gives organisms the means to work out their own responses to different environments and situations (autonomous cell communities, human free will). Before you cry “humanizing” (a) remember that he could very well think like us and probably has similar thought patterns and emotions to ours (D. Turell), and (b) this is not the objection you have just raised, which is that your God is “extremely purposeful”. Now please explain why this theory is not extremely purposeful.

Contains all our personal guesses about God's reasons for His actions in creating us. Fun discussion filling time. I've had fun and entertainment. Any chance of reasonable proofs? No. I won't leave the point that we are God's purpose. Obvious to Adler and me, but not to you. Are we any further ahead in understanding? Yes, it has helped me refine my guesses about the relative importance of preprogramming vs. dabbling. Direct design (dabbling) is much more important, considering all the biochemical complexity I have presented here.

DAVID: Why do you ask that question when you fully should know the answer from my previous comments? The current human population requires a bush of that size […]

dhw: You know perfectly well that I am not questioning the need for the CURRENT bush. I am asking why an all-powerful God who could create us any way he wanted had to create 3.X billion years’ worth of non-human bush before getting on to the only species plus econiche(s) that he wanted to create!

Don't you realize how inconsistent you are? You recognize the need to create the bush and then complain about the delay to make humans! You obviously propose God should not have been patient in creating the process of evolution. What! You want is instant creation of the bush and us? Didn't happen.