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

by dhw, Friday, August 14, 2020, 10:14 (1560 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: There is no point in trying to correct the mishmash of your translation of my theory of how God deals with evolution and His knowledge that functioning molecules make mistakes. First, God is in charge of running evolution.

I would rather you corrected the “mishmash” than simply dodged the arguments, which you now force me to repeat. First, there are different ways of “running” things, as is made clear by the fact that you have offered one theory and I have offered several different theories.

DAVID: Therefore He has total control of the final output at each advancing stage of evolutionary complexity. He codes the genome to his satisfaction. However, the living species can develop DNA copy errors and start to mutate into a direction God likes, because it fits His planned advances in complexity. He allows that to continue. However a bad mutation in God's view will be edited out, and disappear. He has total control of each stage output entering into the next advanced stage.

Here you simply repeat your theory. You ignore your contradictory statements about control (see later), but the major problem is that it contradicts your theory that your all-powerful God’s only purpose was to design H. sapiens, but first he directly designed millions of other life forms etc. The errors you refer to are “chance events, accidents not a designer’s fault” and “DNA as a molecule can always make mistakes and will during evolution and now in a different time.” (see later). These errors can “change the course of evolution”, and indeed “a mutational error favored by natural selection or by God may have arranged our human evolution”. Please explain how God “allowing” random mutations to change the course of evolution is consistent with God directly designing all life forms, including us.

DAVID: I don't care to respond to my quotes taken out of context, when I'm not sure which time period is under discussion: evolutionary time, or while living time when looking at molecular errors, which we know occurred in both time periods.

I was scrupulously careful to indicate which quotes applied to which period, as below.

DAVID: Note I am separating the discussion into two distinct time periods. Mistakes during evolution are totally under God control. However during the time period of simply living as an evolved species, we know from our own experience, mistakes happen. The dinosaur cancer dhw worries about is no issue for God to act. It was the result of copy error. The dinosaur dies, but its death has no relationship to advancing evolution. God doesn't care or even take notice. This fits our current reality. We are in charge of all health corrections, if possible.

In my introduction I made it clear that there were two periods (bolded above): pre-sapiens evolution and the present. Later I distinguished between errors that cause disease and death, and those which “During evolution…can change the course of evolution.” Re the dinosaur, you guessed that disease occurred “quite early”, and your God “put in backups, so He was correcting as much as he could.” Clearly then he cared and took notice, but had a limited degree of control. Since all these errors take place in the same mechanism, I don’t understand how your God could have total control over the evolutionary “errors” and yet only have limited control over the disease-makers. In quote after quote you emphasize that your God CAN’T control the errors: “No form of any God could control molecular mistakes in free-floating molecules which are supposed to respond properly to specific stimuli” and “You do not understand the issue that high speed reactions can have errors God can’t control.”

DAVID: I follow Adler in accepting humans are God's final goal. History tells us God, who is in charge of creating all of reality, evolved us from bacteria. That simple logic escapes dhw, a problem for him I've never understood. My view of God is He knows exactly what He is doing. He has a specific goal, and He proceeded knowing fully what to expect from molecular errors. (dhw’s bold)

Your attempts to ignore the illogical elements of your original theory are dealt with on the other thread. My God would also know exactly what he was doing, and would have a specific goal or goals. That is why I propose that he might have deliberately designed the system with all its errors, instead of your version, which is that he designed it but the errors were not his fault! What do you mean by he knew fully what to expect (bolded)? He could not stop the random errors from occurring but could only “allow” them to change the course of evolution, so are you saying he knew in advance which errors would be beneficial or harmful? You say you are “the one willing to show that God is not all-powerful and all-knowing and he can’t stop molecular errors in a system he created.” Please tell us, then, what your God did NOT know about the errors.

The rest of your post reiterates your beliefs about God and your rejection of my alternative interpretations of his nature and possible purposes. It has nothing to do with your “error theory”, but I will transfer the end to the other thread.