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

by dhw, Wednesday, August 26, 2020, 07:55 (1548 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: 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: I've ended my thought process about mistakes, and you keep going back to what I said before. Concentrate on my sentences NOW.

You did not always have God in charge of speciation, because you had him “allowing” (not designing) random errors that changed the course of evolution, and removing the rest, as per Darwin’s natural selection. Selection is not creation, and contradicts your belief in design, so you changed your tune. This was not a “biased implication”.

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

dhw: […] 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.

DAVID: Rearranging is not deletion! Organisms make epigenetic changes which fit your comment, but those are added methyl groups not deletion.

I didn’t say rearranging was deletion! Please stick to the examples: do you believe that the first cells contained models for hands, wings and fins, and when one model took over, the others were deleted?

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

dhw: 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?

DAVID: No mass of contradictions. Quite clear to me if you carefully read my explanations in various threads. As usual you have reintroduced you God who concedes control over evolution to the organisms themselves, as if they could understand design for future purpose.

I’ve listed the contradictions, and you have simply told me to forget about them. You keep going on about design for future purposes, when I have explained over and over again that my theory does NOT involve foreseeing the future and is entirely based on organisms reacting to current conditions.

DAVID: My God performed His actions to produce us, choosing methods He preferred. Under your system it is highly doubtful we would have appeared, since our brain power is not necessary for life surviving as our ancestor apes clearly show.

See “Back to David’s theory of evolution” concerning your God’s direct design of all the non-human branches of the giant bush as being necessary for him to directly design H. sapiens. No multicellular organism was necessary for life to survive, since bacteria have done very nicely, thank you. And the system above is only one of several explanations I have offered for the history of life, including one that does make humans into your God’s one and only goal. Whether the above system would have produced humans is irrelevant. You can argue that it was lucky for us that it did, but if it hadn’t, so what?