Back to David's theory of evolution: God's errors (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, July 27, 2020, 10:41 (1331 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: A technical error is the designers fault!!! Like the MAX 737. These biological accidents are chance events, accidents not a designers fault.

dhw: But you keep telling us that it was your God who designed the molecules! Design is design, whether technological or biological. And if he's responsible for the designs that do work, why is he not responsible for the designs that don't?

DAVID: God is not there holding hands with the molecules. They are designed to follow chemical commands, but the molecule may make its own mistake and mess up the reaction. Not God's fault, and He recognized the problem with backup systems in place. You do not understand the issue that high speed reactions can have errors God can't control.

I’m going to skip most of my own responses now, and focus on your own statements, as you are creating an extraordinary pattern. Evidently your God created molecules which – whether he intended it or not – are capable of going their own way. They make “mistakes” which he does not want them to make, and even the backup systems don’t always work. And these “biological accidents are chance events.” Now consider these two comments of yours:

DAVID: “A mutational error favored by natural selection or by God may have arranged for our human evolution.

DAVID: “God did not want errors. If the mutation resulted in our evolution God achieved His goal!”

All of a sudden, we have random mutations leading to humans, who were supposed to be God’s one and only purpose. You even go so far as to give equal billing to natural selection and to your God as “favouring” the random mutation, but there is certainly no question here of his controlling it. If a random mutation can result in the evolution of humans, random mutations can result in every other organ and organism that ever existed. Welcome to Darwinism. However, there is another possible interpretation. (At this point I’d prefer to substitute cells for molecules, since the latter are only part of the system.) If cells can go their own way and destroy one another, maybe they can also go their own way and defend one another or – since they may be capable of making changes that resulted in our evolution – maybe they can also create the changes which have resulted in the rest of evolution. You’ve told us that “God is not at work now”. Maybe he was not at work in the distant past either. In the picture you have just drawn for us, he designed the system, put in backups – some of which worked and some of which didn’t – and from then on (apart perhaps from the occasional dabble) the cells simply went their own way. In other words, they had free rein.

DAVID: I know you don't agree with my version of God, as you humanize Him beyond recognition. God dos not give free rein. He is too purposeful, our major disagreement.

I have dealt with the silly “humanization” argument elsewhere. The version of your God that you have just presented has him accidentally – despite all his best efforts to provide safeguards - giving free rein to molecules to make their own mistakes, although these random errors may have led to the evolution of humans. Our major disagreement most emphatically is not about God’s purposefulness. If he exists, I have no doubt that the whole history of evolution reflects his purpose. And I have offered you different possible and – by your own admission logical – interpretations both of his purpose and his method of achieving that purpose. However, I have NOT offered you a version in which I combine an all-purposeful, all-knowing, always-in-control God who is unable to control the system of life that he has created, whose one aim is to produce H. sapiens but who directly designs every non-human life form, lifestyle, econiche, natural wonder etc. in the history of life before designing the only life form he wants to design, and whose one and only purpose may have been achieved through random mutations although he directly designs every species. I’m afraid I find such a version too illogical to support.


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