Treating congenital defects with gene editing (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, June 15, 2020, 17:49 (1620 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Thank goodness, our advanced human brain can find solutions for biological problems. It is the answer I have for theodicy. God gave us a brain that can solve problems that arise.

dhw: Disregarding the problems that our fellow organisms and our not-so-clever ancestors have had to face over the last 3.8 billion years, why do you think he wanted to set us problems in the first place?

DAVID: Opening up to lots of guesswork. Viruses were with us from close to the beginning of life, and there is important evidence they actually helped in the process of evolution. That doesn't explain the bad ones, but that means their evolution was not tightly controlled by God; we don't know the reason. Didn't worry about it, didn't care, or let it go on purposely. Take your pick.

dhw: Nobody “knows” your God’s reasons for anything! But it appears from this that God might NOT always be in tight control of evolution. And if you accept that as a POSSIBILITY, you can hardly reject it as a possible explanation for the vast variety of life forms resulting from his not WISHING to tightly control evolution, i.e. that he let evolution ”go on purposely”.

Or His tight control allowed the mistakes to happen because He anticipated our giant brain would solve the problems that appeared!

DAVID: As for biological mistakes, the complexity of life has many safeguards built in, but it is obvious that mistakes can happen and do. We seem to be able to solve some from our brain power and that applies to creating vaccines also. We do have the brains.

dhw: My question was why you think he wanted to set us problems in the first place. If you argue that all the problems he set us may have been the result of his letting evolution “go on purposely”, you are supporting the theory that he set it in motion and did not control it. Or if he made mistakes, you are committing what you seem to regard as almost blasphemous, i.e. that your God is humanly fallible. As an “answer for theodicy”, it works quite nicely, though – evil is the result of God not being in control, or being humanly fallible.

Same reply: Or His tight control allowed the mistakes to happen because He anticipated our giant brain would solve the problems that appeared! All we know is that there are biological errors in any living system operating at such high speed, and controls designed into it cannot stop everyone of them. That leaves us with: God did the best He could, and any better is impossible considering the necessary complexity of living organisms. I'll accept that.