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

by David Turell , Thursday, August 27, 2020, 15:37 (1547 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You had used the word “control” ambiguously to mean “prevent” and also to mean “make something do what you want it to do”. I should have cottoned on earlier. Matter settled. Thank you.

I then asked you to explain why he didn’t install an anti-cancer “editing systems” (along with editing systems for all the other diseases which continue to kills us). Your previous explanation was that he didn’t care.

Thank you for beginning to understand my view about errors..

DAVID: 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 cannot control are not warts!

dhw: I don’t know what editing systems prevent cancer, but I do know that whatever systems there are have not prevented cancer, and we humans continue to look for means to prevent, control or cure it. It would appear then that the problem was not that he didn’t care, but he tried his best and failed. We are back to your God’s incompetence, although he is all-powerful when he is not incompetent. Except that we have another problem: death is “required”.

Your 'new' take as usual is to denigrate God. The editing systems are 99.9999999+% perfect but reproduction is constant, so cancer turns up.

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?

DAVID: 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.

dhw: You have ignored my answer to your “mirror” argument, and totally ignored my question.

Not ignored at all. Please recognize the point that aging itself without major disease exists. Many folks and animals just die from wearing out. We all have to die to make room. You may not like God for it, but aging is built in all by itself.

DAVID: Another molecular error leading to cancer:
https://phys.org/news/2020-08-uncontrolled-molecule-rare-liver-cancer.html
DAVID: Here again we see that either a molecular error or a cancer-caused error can lead to uncontrolled cancer growth and spread. The controls are present at first, telling us God foresaw errors and tried to correct for them, both by the controls of cAMP and examples I've presented of editing.

dhw: Here we see again a clear example of your God’s incompetence, leaving us poor humans to try and do what he apparently couldn’t. If I believed in God, I could believe that he was capable of experimenting, of getting new ideas, of enjoying his creations, of deliberately leaving molecules and cells to do their own designing and make their own errors. But I would find it very hard to believe that he would be so incompetent as to try and correct mistakes he couldn’t prevent, fail, and simply leave it to us lesser beings to sort out the mess he had left behind.

Your obvious bias is showing. I accept God despite all the warts you invent. Instead of expressing wonder at all He created, you carefully try and describe faults that don't exist in my mind. I didn't realize how narrow your concepts are.