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

by dhw, Thursday, October 01, 2020, 11:42 (1512 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Who designed the parasite? But it is ONLY a failure if, as you have stated, your God doesn’t wish us any harm. Of course the nasty viruses, bacteria, parasites and “errors” in God’s specially designed system of life are part of the bush of life. And theodicy is what we are discussing here. Your solution appears to be that I should stop thinking about the bad bits (“back to the donut and its hole”) and focus on the good bits. I’m suggesting as you did that a Garden of Eden would be dull, and that the mixture of good and bad is precisely what your God wanted, and he achieved what he wanted by giving cells the freedom to do their own designing. [dhw: Just as he did by giving us free will – if there is such a thing.]

DAVID: I agree about the Garden of Eden but not the cells as you want them to be.

dhw: Then we are back to the question of why a God who wishes us no harm directly designed the harmful viruses, bacteria and parasites.

DAVID: Maybe they are necessary in a way we do not understand, just as we don't understand quantum mechanics, but it works. There is no other answer.

I have offered you an answer. At least it does away with the absurd proposal that a God who doesn’t wish us any harm has designed bacteria and viruses that can do us nothing but harm..

DAVID: Harmful viruses and bacteria keep life a challenge, and we have been given the brains to fight them.

dhw: Bad luck on all the other creatures they killed before we came along. And bad luck on all the humans who are still dying in their millions. […] But it’s OK, because presumably God – who wishes us no harm – wants to challenge us. NB it is YOUR theory that he designed them – not mine.

DAVID: Tell me who designed the bad viruses and bacteria. What is your source?

According to you, your God designed them.You are my source! See your answers above. My proposal is that they designed themselves using their perhaps God-given intelligence. If you don’t think your in-tight-control God designed them, who did?

DAVID (from “Neanderthal”): What is the point of a God-given mechanism only partially under his control? […] I see Him as staying tight control, fully purposeful. Why is it important to you to view a God with partial control.

The point would be the bold in my first response above, which is “fully purposeful”. What is important to me here is to find a logical explanation for evolution. Why is it important to you that your God should be in tight control?

dhw: As far as evolution is concerned, do you or do you not accept that adaptation goes ahead without your God’s intervention? If so, do you or do you not accept that (theistic version) your God must have created a mechanism enabling cells to change their structure in accordance with the demands of the environment? […]

DAVID (on the “Neanderthal” thread): Of course organisms adapt to current changing conditions. Epigenetic changes are survival changes so the organisms live the best way they can. We have both agreed we don't know why speciation occurs. I believe God speciates. He has not given the ability of speciation to organisms. The new complexities require design by God.

Still no direct answer. Let me try a different approach, using our two favourite examples. For the moment forget about adaptation/speciation. Why is it inconceivable to you that local conditions may have caused a group of apes to spend more time on the ground than up in the trees, and as a result of this they spent more and more time on two legs as this gave them certain advantages? And in due course bipedalism became the norm, with all the attendant changes to the anatomy? Ditto pre-whales, who spent more and more time in the water, as a result of which their legs turned into fins?

dhw: QUESTION: Why did God design every life form, econiche, natural wonder etc. that ever existed? ANSWER 1: Because the only life forms he wanted to design were H. sapiens plus food supply. ANSWER 2: Because he wanted to design them all. Which of these would you say makes more sense?

DAVID: If God chose to evolve us of course He desired to create all the necessary stages as a part of the process. Answer one is your unreasonable version of my theory. We were His purposeful eventual outcome. […] It is patently obvious God wanted to create us.

But you have him specifically designing ALL species, so it must be patently obvious that he wanted to create ALL species throughout the last 3.8 billion years. Which can only mean that we weren’t the one and only species he wanted to create! Or can you tell us in what way the dodo and the dinosaur plus millions of other dead life forms were “necessary stages” before he could start designing us.

DAVID: Those reasons can only be guessed at. Where is your emphasis? To guess at them?

My emphasis here lies on finding possible explanations for the history of life as we know it. The whole point of this forum is to find explanations and to test them for their likelihood.