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

by dhw, Tuesday, August 25, 2020, 09:22 (1549 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You still haven’t explained how your God can control errors which he can’t control. Now you are emphasizing how well the system works because right from the start God installed means of correcting the errors which he didn’t want and couldn’t control and has even left for us to correct! At this point, I'm tempted to ask whether you are praising your God for his cleverness, or excusing him for his incompetence.

DAVID: Fact: The molecules are free to follow directions. No incompetence involved.

I thought they were free NOT to follow directions, which is why there are “mistakes” which your God can’t control. You praise him for providing mechanisms to ensure proper copying, but these don’t always work either, and he’s now left us to correct what he couldn’t or didn’t correct. Sounds pretty incompetent to me.

DAVID: Talbott was presented to show his amazement and awe as to how the cells managed to produce despite the chaos of the interior of each cell. Unfortunately you still misunderstand with preconceived bias. You want puppetized molecules. Imagine how the strings would tangle!!

I don’t “want” anything, and I don’t need Talbott to tell me how amazing and awesome the mechanisms of life are. If I believed in a God, he would have designed what he WANTED to design, and freedom to act (the opposite of “puppetized”) is the very basis of my alternative to your theory of evolution. See the end of this post.

DAVID: I view God as in charge of all speciation. He has to change an earlier species to the next. Therefore, since species adapt to new problems, God must review those alterations to be sure they are on course to the next planned step.
The sentence above refers to species having the ability to make epigenetic adaptations. Nothing to do with individual cell changes.

dhw: I don’t see how organisms can adapt without cell changes, but why does he have to review them - let alone "edit" them - if they don’t change cells and therefore don’t pose any threat to his “next planned step”? Maybe you’re thinking of the bad old days a couple of weeks ago, when you inadvertently espoused Darwinism and had these “errors” (random mutations) changing the course of evolution.

DAVID: Only your biased implication. I have always had God in charge of speciation and editing any DNA veering off course.

What "bias"? You had your God “allowing” (not designing) beneficial mutations that changed the course of evolution and destroying the rest. That is pure Darwinist natural selection. When I pointed it out, you changed your mind and said he only allowed “slight variations” which would not affect his plans. If they did not affect his plans, what was there to edit?

DAVID: "Devolving' per Behe means that all the future organism models might be present in the original DNA/genome.

dhw: Your response appears to confirm that the first cells “might have” contained models for hands, wings and fins, and these were discarded at the appropriate time. I suggest that each new organ came into existence as a response to new requirements or opportunities, and as evolution progressed, so the same organ underwent changes to meet the next set of requirements.

DAVID: Your non-answer avoids the point from Behe. Advances come from removing code! Your answer implies added code or rearranged code.

I’m not avoiding it. If Behe thinks the first cells contained models for hands, wings and fins, and the irrelevant models were discarded (I’m relying on your interpretation of Behe’s thoughts), then I find it extremely unlikely and am proposing an alternative: yes, indeed, that the “code” is rearranged, as an organ changes its structure in order to adapt to or exploit new conditions. I don’t think my version is unknown to mainstream science.

dhw: Our endpoint is death, and since it is required, are you telling us that your God did or did not deliberately design “errors” (including mistakes of the genetic immune system) that can lead to death? Did he want disease or didn’t he?

DAVID: God obviously didn't want us to have diseases, therefore all the editing mechanisms.

Why “obviously”? What a mess you’ve got your God into! He wanted death (which was “required”), didn’t want diseases that cause death, provided controls to control the molecular errors he couldn’t control (some controls didn’t work), and left us to correct what he didn’t/couldn’t correct. Here is an alternative to your mass of contradictions, and the exact opposite of “puppetized molecules”, which until now have been at the heart of your own theory that has your God in total control of absolutely everything:

He created a mechanism which allows all life forms to work out their own designs, strategies, lifestyles, wonders etc. If molecules create changes (let’s not call them “errors”), it is because he wanted them to create changes. And these would include beneficial changes that advance evolution, deleterious changes that cause disease and death (see below), and beneficial changes as counters to those that cause disease and death, all in an on-going, ever changing process that has produced the vast variety of life on Earth. Why can’t you “live with” this?