Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, July 13, 2020, 11:36 (1592 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] (a) if your God’s powers cannot prevent errors, his powers are limited, and (b) even your proposal that your God provided corrective measures that sometimes work and sometimes don’t work does not disprove the theory that he deliberately created the errors in the first place, since the immortality of every creature would rapidly have led to sheer chaos on Planet Earth.

DAVID: Certainly death has to be builtin.

And death is caused by “errors” in the system, which means your God wanted death and therefore wanted the built-in errors. Away with the limited powers you illogically ascribe to your all-powerful God.

Under “Immunity system complexity”: Yet the immune system is so sophisticated, with layers upon layers of brakes, that existing approaches may be “just scratching the surface,” says Peng." (DAVID's bold)

DAVID: I've used the article on cancer therapy to show the degree of immune complexity (note the bold), and our new-found ability to analyze it and tailor it to create therapies. Thank goodness God gave us this big brain that can be used to improve on His designs.

I would suggest that the complexity of the immune system has evolved “layer upon layer” as the cells have created their own defences against disease after disease, gradually building up a library of responses. I have doubts about an all-powerful God who finds it impossible to create a system without errors, while clever humans manage to correct his errors. Gosh, we are cleverer than God! I reckon that if he exists, he would have created the errors deliberately (see above), but gave cells the intelligence to correct some of them (I suspect that even pre-human animals had an immune system!) though of course I agree that humans have used their extraordinary intelligence to broaden the range of responses available to our fellow organisms.

DAVID: The bold tells us of your blind thoughts about God. Humans were a goal, not the method to reach their creation. Confused mixed up thinking.

dhw: I’m afraid I don’t understand your statement. According to you, humans were THE goal, and in order to achieve his goal, he specially designed billions of now extinct NON-HUMAN life forms, econiches, lifestyles, strategies, natural wonders etc. But, understandably, you have no idea why he chose such a method.

DAVID: His method, evolution, requires exactly what you illogically complain about.

But according to you, all the life forms, econiches, lifestyles etc. were directly designed by your God. You use the word “evolution” to cover your Creationism in your attempt to dodge the question of why your God would choose to spend 3.X billion years directly designing anything but the only thing he wanted to design. Please stop dodging.

DAVID: More confused thought. The huge bush of econiches feeds everyone. when humans arrive and their population grows larger enough food is present.

dhw: But 99% of the huge bush of specially designed, food-supplying econiches had disappeared by the time humans arrived!

DAVID: More disjointed thought. Where is the room for all those lost species? You support death above!

And the question you keep dodging is why he specially designed them all in the first place if his only purpose was to design us! Your only answer is that you have no idea. I offer you answers: maybe he was experimenting, or maybe humans came late on in his thinking, or maybe humans were not his one and only purpose, and maybe he didn’t directly design the vast bush but created a mechanism whereby organisms did their own autonomous designing. All these ideas provide a logical explanation for the history, whereas you have “no idea” how to explain your own interpretation of that history.

DAVID: Of course both you and I are theorizing. You like your thoughts, I like mine as this long train of discussion shows.

dhw: And the discussion so far has shown that you have no idea why your God would have chosen the method you impose on him for achieving the purpose you impose on him, you agree that the alternative “humanizing” purposes and methods I have proposed are perfectly logical and God probably has thought patterns similar to ours, but you reject them because we can’t know whether any of them are true, and so you will stick to your own illogical theory, although we can’t know whether that is true either.

DAVID: Still illogical. The bold is not my imposition! The history of evolution tells us His choice of method. Remember my view that God creates reality. Your proposals are all about a humanizing a God who isn't quite sure what He is dong as He experiments or invents spectacles to watch.

I will keep my theist hat on, and for argument’s sake accept the existence of God. It is your subjective interpretation of the history that (a) God is all-powerful, all-knowing and always in control (except when he makes errors); b) his only purpose was to create H. sapiens, (c) he directly designed every life form, econiche, natural wonder etc. that ever existed. These are opinions which you impose on your God as if they were facts. Your “humanizing” objection to my logical alternatives is invalidated by your agreement that your God probably has thought patterns similar to ours, so please stop flogging it.