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

by David Turell , Saturday, September 26, 2020, 20:21 (1517 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Your 'best system' is not my considered biochemical thinking about the freedom of molecules. The molecules must be free in order for the high speed manufacturing and cell splitting can go on at the speed it must have in a liquid environment. They don't work on a solid assembly line but still work like 24-hour factories. Frankly, I wish you appreciated this. Your theorizing is skipping over all of the absolute requirements.

dhw: I appreciate that it all works wonderfully well, but unfortunately your response "is skipping over" the problem of "errors", which is the subject of this article. These, you keep telling us, are inevitable... you decided that we should not bother about the disease-causing errors and should only focus on all those parts of the system that worked perfectly. THAT is the subject of this discussion, together with the implications of the "freedom" your God could not avoid giving to the molecules.

Thanks for the review, but you really haven't responded to the point this is more than likely the only 'best' living biochemical system we can have that God gave us.

DAVID: This discussion is back to theodicy to which my answer is God knows what He is doing, even if some of it looks bad to us. I don't accept intelligent cells at all, on their own. They simply follow God's instruction. And God speciates.

dhw: I know you don’t accept intelligent cells. That is the reason for my now bolded sentence concerning adaptation. Either cells are "free" to adapt, or your God preprogrammed or dabbled every adaptation. Please comment.

I did in the other thread: "How do you know the Cape Verde folks didn't have a chance lucky mutation? No God. It happens." Some of the odd hemoglobins in Africa arrived by chance and the mosquitoes arranged for humans to 'select' them, to use a Darwinian term. N oi God involved.

dhw: I agree that if God exists he knows what he is doing. Theodicy is only a problem if you believe that God is concerned about his creatures and wishes them no harm. It is no problem at all if you believe that his intention was to let life and evolution run free, and the mixture of good and bad was created intentionally. Hence our next exchange:

DAVID: I’ve said in my first book God did not create a Garden of Eden for us, as dull. Just your point and I AGREE.

dhw: So do you agree that your God may have deliberately created the good and the bad in order to avoid “dullness”? In that case, why all this talk of “errors”?

DAVID: The errors are part and parcel of the living biochemical system that keeps us alive. They had to be discussed.

dhw: And if what you call the “errors” were essential to God’s plan to create a mixture of good and bad, and not a dull “Garden of Eden”, we have resolved the issue: he had to give the molecules/cells their freedom if dullness was to be avoided.

They are free because the system had to be that way, dullness not a defining issue for God.

DAVID: And I had no idea, in advance, it would make you so uncomfortable.

dhw: It doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all. I find the above explanation perfectly understandable and acceptable.

Great.

DAVID: God's dealt with the problem, I presume to His satisfaction and I agree with what He has done as the correct system by carefully analyzing how it works and why it has to work the way it does. It seems your discomfort has lead to much negative theory about God and his desires and purposes.

dhw: But you have agreed with my point that you can’t have the good without the bad, as it would result in a dull “Garden of Eden”. There is nothing negative or positive in this. We are simply looking for explanations. But the discomfort is obviously yours, because elsewhere you have insisted that your God wouldn’t do anything to harm his creations, he cares for us etc. It is this “humanized” view of God which makes you so uncomfortable that you prefer to focus on all the successes and not even to discuss the disease-causing errors.

Note my reference to African hemoglobins. Sickle cell is a bad disease for some Blacks. I know all the problems, and it is only your interpretation that I ignore the problems. And I would never dare to humanize Him as you do constantly. Of course He must have some feelings for us, His creations, but exactly the depth is known only to Him. You prefer spectacle and experimentation, while I see Him as totally purposeful. On that we will always differ.