Back to David's theory of evolution: Talbott on cell death (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 26, 2020, 18:39 (1548 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I've explained it clearly. The ability to have errors bothered me, so I had to work out a theory had settled my mind by bouncing it off your skepticism which in its confusion is quite helpful. During evolution minor mutation variations can be adopted/allowed as of no consequence, and major off-course ones are edited out as God speciates the next stage of evolution of all species. During life the errors are in the main controlled by editing systems provided by God from the beginning of life who knew full well about the problem.

dhw: I’m a little surprised to see your blatant contradictions described in terms of my confusion, but we’ll let that pass. If evolutionary errors are of no consequence, I don't know why they bothered you. The “errors” that cause disease and death bother us all. I still don’t understand how you can say in one breath that your God can’t control them, but he can control them by means of editing systems, but the thought occurs to me that what you meant is that he can’t PREVENT them. I hope that helps. But if he installed editing systems from the beginning of life, surely they should have edited out the errors before they even appeared! For example, cancer is a typical “error”. Clearly he did NOT install an editing system to remove the cancerous cells. And so he’s apparently left it to us to work out an “editing” system. Ditto every disease you can think of that requires human intervention. Your original explanation was that he didn’t care. What is your explanation now?

The bold is quite surprising, and clearly shows how I have confused you. I've said all along, in my words, God couldn't prevent errors, which is the same as saying living molecules can make errors on their own in the high speed molecular living systems. God put in the editing systems because HE knew all of the problems all along, despite designing life the best He could. As for cancer there are many editing systems which are put in place to prevent them in the copy-error prevention role played during cell division by many parts of the mechanism. I finally have the sense that you seem to begin to understand what I am portraying. I still view Him as all-powerful considering all He has created. What He cann ot control are not warts!

dhw: You have forgotten about death, which was “required” – obviously by him, since nobody else was around. If he required it, don’t you think his design would have deliberately been made to cause it and to cause the diseases (errors) that lead to death?

DAVID: Your usual confusion. Death is required as we both agree, but living organisms living as long as they can is also required. Please remember our bodies are constantly in massive turn over as cells are replaced constantly, but you and I look in the mirror and see the same image. Why? God's error-correction editing systems work so well. Yet errors slip in that we have the smarts to correct in large part.

dhw: We see the same image because the system is working, not because this “editing system” is constantly correcting errors. The problem is errors that are not corrected (e.g. cancer), and lead to disease and death, which your God “required”. How could he have ensured death without ensuring that there were errors that could not be corrected?

As usual you have forgotten parts of the issue. Look in the mirror. I do. We are both aging, and that is built in. We will pass away with or without errors.