Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, June 28, 2020, 21:25 (1607 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: But that is exactly what the biochemistry of life shows. Safeguard systems exist!

dhw: The existence of problems could be due to your God WANTING a system with problems (see below under “God’s lack of control”), and the existence of safeguards could be due to his giving cell communities the means to devise their own. This indeed is what you imply when you say below that he gave us our brains so that we could solve the problems he set – only I note that our fellow animals also have immune systems which solve problems.

And animals have no ability to solve problems as we do at the biochemical l evel.

DAVID: As I stated, you won't accept Adler's logical reasoning. 1,2 and 3 need no linkage if one follows my reasoning based on Adler's theory.

dhw: Please stick to your own reasoning, since you have informed us that Adler does not deal with your personal theory of evolution. And yet again, please explain to us why your all-powerful God (who actually isn’t all-powerful when it comes to making mistakes), whose sole purpose was to directly design H. sapiens, directly designed millions of non-human life forms before starting to directly design H. sapiens’ ancestors before directly designing H. sapiens. If you cannot explain the logic of your guess, then please don’t tell us it’s logical because of Adler!

Adler is a starting point for my thinking. Evolution interests him only is that it produced us, and his argument compares us to apes. Why can't I think to develop my own theories after recognizing Adler's position and using it as a starting point. He and I accept God, another starting point. You can think logically but I can't because you do not like/accept my starting points? Illogical in and of itself.

Under the fascinating heading: God's lack of control
QUOTE: “The upshot is that researchers discovered a complex dance between genes and hormones. Any misstep in the waltz can spell disaster."

DAVID: these are errors, missteps, God cannot stop, but humans can work around most of the time.

dhw: After all this time in which you insisted that your God was always in control of everything, it’s highly illuminating to see you making a feature of his lack of control. How about considering the possibility that your God did not WANT control, and that he deliberately created a system that would malfunction? Do you really imagine him wanting to specially design millions of organisms that would live for ever and ever and would reproduce more organisms that would live for ever and ever? Endings and new beginnings seem to me to be part of the essence of life – and if life was designed by God as an ever changing spectacle, then of course the system would have to cause endings as well as beginnings. And once more: if your God is not in control of one aspect of evolution – either through weakness or through deliberate choice - why should he not also lack control over other aspects? (I prefer deliberate choice, as I am less convinced than you, in your latest U-turn, that your God makes mistakes.)

We should agree to this interpretation: God created living biochemistry in order for life to have a beginning. at the bacterial simple level, the Lenski experiment has been discussed here. It does not appear that at that simple level of existing that anything really goes wrong, but in reproduction (cell-splitting) DNA changes and new mutations appear. God does not/has not supplied a bacterial mechanism to stop those changes. So it can be assumed He allows/allowed them. But at our complex level there are many built in safeguard systems. Thus for me it is easy to see God recognized mistakes would occur and countered what He could. My perfect God cannot design a perfect error-less biochemical living system running at high speed. I have always accepted that. All you want to do is attack poor God as therefore less than adequate. We're back to theodicy as a complaint.