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

by dhw, Saturday, September 19, 2020, 10:27 (1524 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: As usual a wishy-washy God who relinquishes control. Not my God.

dhw: Am I right in assuming that you believe your God no longer intervenes and merely watches our world with interest? If so, he has relinquished control. Is that wishy-washy?

DAVID: I don't know if God intervenes at this time, but what He has provided us attests to His extreme attention to purpose. From history I do not interpret God as you do.

I thought you believed that evolution was over but you were sure God was still watching with interest. Why would that be wishy-washy? I have always agreed that if God exists, he is purposeful, and I know only too well that you have a fixed view of that purpose allied to an illogical view of how he achieved it. Now please tell me why my proposal does not fit in with the history of life as we know it.

QUOTE: “The entire process reduces replication errors around a thousand-fold, serving as one of our body’s best defenses against genetic mutations that can lead to cancer.”

dhw: Wonderful, except that cancer remains rife.

DAVID: Usual dour view of life. We are now curing much of cancer's attacks, unfortunately not all as yet. I see the doughnut, while you are gazing at the hole.

dhw: Great image, but I do not have a “dour view of life”. I am trying to find an explanation for those realities of life which, despite your career as a doctor, you would rather not think about. The “unfortunately” comment is part of your theory that despite all his wonderful successes, your (sometimes) all-powerful God was unable to correct these disease-causing errors and so left it to us clever humans to do what he couldn’t do. And yet puzzlingly you appear to have raised the subject of these uncontrollable errors in order to draw our attention to the errors he did control.

DAVID: This indicates your total confusion about why I brought up errors: For completeness of understanding of what God has achieved and how He has in the main controlled errors, He obviously reasonably anticipated.

I am indeed confused. If your sole intention had been to praise God for all that he had achieved, why did you open the discussion by arguing that the errors were not his fault and were out of his control, and therefore he could only “allow” errors to change the course of evolution, and he did not care about errors that caused disease, although he did provide backups which didn’t always work? You want me to ignore all this now, but it was you who raised the subject and provided these explanations. Why did you bother if, as you now argue, evolutionary errors are “slight variations” and disease-causing errors are minimal? The latter is a cop-out. Diseases are rife. And broadening the debate, it wouldn’t surprise me if even some religious people weren’t wondering why your almost all-powerful God designed or allowed or gave freedom to bad viruses. I doubt if anyone would be comforted to know that these are only minimal compared to his successes. This is not a denial of all the wonders – they are not a problem that needs to be explained. You raised the problem of the non-successes, and now you want to wash your hands of it.

QUOTE: “the machines involved show exquisite craftsmanship and efficient action to keep other parts — machines outside their own structural needs — humming along.
"How can they do that? How do they know? Such things do not just appear by blind material processes.”

dhw: One answer could be that (theistic version) God gave them the intelligence to respond to requirements. But NB that does not mean their intelligence is sufficient to counter the intelligence of other intelligent cells or organisms that pose a threat. The freedom to diverge from a single pattern allows what we would regard as the goodies and the baddies. And so you have a complete explanation not only for evolution but also for what you have called the “errors” that cause disease. Why do you find it laughable that the realities of evolution, including diseases, defences against disease, and the great bush of life itself, might all be precisely what your God wanted and might all stem from the freedom which you agree he gave to the cells he designed?

DAVID: Once again a wish-washy God giving up total control of the works He is creating. you're back to chance advances a' la Darwin'.

You agree that your God might enjoy what he creates, and that the molecules were free to disobey his instructions, so why is it wishy-washy for him to have deliberately created a mechanism that constantly and freely produces all the wonders he enjoys? The advances are not by chance if they are produced by intelligent beings who know what they’re doing. Humans are the most obvious example – and you don’t find it wishy-washy that your God gave us free will, do you? Nothing to do with Darwin, and I don’t know why you think any mention of his name will invalidate any proposal different from yours. Now will you please at last tell me how my theory contradicts the history of life as we know it.