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

by dhw, Tuesday, September 01, 2020, 08:30 (1542 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If your God gave molecules the freedom to disobey his instructions, perhaps a better analogy would be human free will: God issued his commandments, but it was up to humans to obey them or not. However, this analogy – absolving God from responsibility for any “errors” – means that he deliberately relinquished control over his molecules (i.e. “errors” were part of his plan).

DAVID: Freedom of molecules to make mistakes is part and parcel of the form of living mechanisms God gave us. [dhw: That is the theory I am proposing with my “free will” analogy.] We do not know of another system and if such system could work. My guess is He could not design system of constant cell reproduction which keeps our bodies fresh over the years of our lives without some errors by molecules. [dhw: All irrelevant to my proposal that the “freedom of molecules to make mistakes” was part of his plan, as with free will. If it wasn’t, then he produced something he didn’t want to produce!]

dhw: Since death was “required”, disease-causing errors were essential, but if some nasty molecules had the freedom to find ways of killing us, other molecules had the freedom to find ways of fighting the nasty molecules. (Hence the ever evolving immune system, and human ingenuity in finding cures.) But even if they succeeded, your God had built in death from old age. Isn’t this a better analogy, and a more respectful one for your God, who in your version has lost control, tries to regain it but sometimes fails?

DAVID:[…] Stop trying to revise what you apparently think is a terrible version of my God.

It is you who insist that your God could not prevent the disease-causing errors arising from the system he designed, tried to stop or correct them, but sometimes failed. What have I “revised”? My analogy proposes that he designed precisely what he wanted to design. What is your objection?

dhw: You said that this form of immunity had to be designed simultaneously into the first appearance of each new species. I don’t see why. Do you disagree that new organisms will have inherited certain forms of immunity from their ancestors, and do you disagree that immunity is an on-going process as cells react to new threats?

DAVID: You have carefully avoided the issue of disease protection in the first versions of life. I would suggest bacteria and viruses were present as God started life […]] You are correct: the defense mechanisms are carried through from the first organisms by purposeful design.

dhw: There is no careful avoidance! I completely accept what you say about the behaviour and role of bacteria and viruses! But I was responding to your claim that a particular form of immunity had to be designed into the first appearance of each new species.[/b]

DAVID: My point still is first life had to be designed with immunity defense mechanisms when the organisms appeared. They didn't appear by chance.

Your point was what I have bolded above. Hence my answer. Thank you for agreeing with my correction. I have no idea when nice first life and nasty first life appeared, but I would suggest that both were equipped with the means of attacking or defending. My proposed means for both is a form of intelligence, and this may have been designed by your God.

DAVID (under “Brain expansion”):The bold forgets my discussions of molecular errors. In advancing evolution God can not trust a DNA design mechanism totally on its own!

dhw: Your discussion of molecular errors finished up with you telling us to ignore them and focus on the 99.99999% success rate.

DAVID: Twisted distortion of my argument. To keep on living each organism needs precise editing. In evolution God is always the final editor. Two separate topics.
And: The error problem constantly confuses you. You can't separate the two issues, namely mistakes of cell reproduction during life, handled very competently by editing, but not completely, and the problem of DNA errors as they might influence evolutionary advances. In that issue, God in charge of evolution edits to produces what He wishes.

I don’t know what you think I’ve distorted. According to the latest edition of your evolutionary errors theory, they were just “slight variations” which he allowed through because they would not change the course of evolution. But now, up there in bold, you’ve got your God personally operating on a group of Moroccan brains because he himself “cannot trust” the mechanism he designed. So fear of what errors would have made him intervene and directly expand pre-sapiens brains? To keep on living, each organism needs the system to work without uncorrectable errors. According to you, he could not prevent errors, tried his best to correct them, created backups which didn’t always work, and finally left it to us to correct the errors he couldn’t correct. However, these apparently amount to only 0.000001% of the system, so you wrote: “stick to wonderment with me”, and “the point of the error discussion is to show you that despite the errors the vast majority of all organisms continue throughout their lives unchanged due to the excellent editing”, and I should “concentrate on the amazing accuracy of his editing system”.