The simplest explanation? (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, October 03, 2020, 11:52 (1510 days ago) @ dhw

I must apologize. For some reason my previous entry was under “brain expansion”, and of course your response went into the same thread. I’ve altered the heading now, but those two posts remain on the the brain expansion thread. This may be why you have not responded to the post (2 October at 12.36) that did deal with brain expansion. I will have to be more careful!

dhw: According to you, he speciates by preprogramming or dabbling, and I’ve asked you why this is more likely than him designing cellular intelligence to do the speciating.

DAVID: The designs as shown in today's entry about molecular machines are extreme complexity. It is more difficult to design a machine that can make an entirely new machine than to do the direct design. In automated factories there are folks who do a large part of the intricate work to complete the production. It is amazing that God has created a process that organisms can reproduce/replicate themselves exactly. That is very different than the designed creation of profoundly different new forms.

I am not denying the complexity of molecular and cellular “machines”, and we don’t need this comparison to factories. “More difficult” is irrelevant if you are talking about an all-powerful God. Or are you trying to tell us that your God was incapable of producing a machine that would make new machines? Of course you’re not. We are dealing here with two problems, based on an acceptance of God’s existence: 1) how does evolution work? 2) why did your God create life? The two are covered below:

dhw: How does our not yet knowing the layers of control make your theory of God’s implanted instructions more likely than Shapiro’s theory of cellular intelligence?

DAVID: We know bacteria can reprogram some of their DNA through Shapiro. We've seen Lenski's many 20+ years of study of e. Coli. E. Coli is still E. coli. I'm still with God speciating. Shapiro has never gotten any support through research. I accept research.

Shapiro’s theory is based on research (his own and other people’s) into the behaviour of cells. He concludes – as have many other scientists – that cells are intelligent. I don’t know what research you have done yourself, but that doesn’t matter: you know how cells behave and you have concluded that although they behave intelligently, they are obeying instructions which your God implanted in the first cells 3.8 billion years ago. I really can’t see how your theory is therefore more scientific, more logical or more reliable than Shapiro’s.

dhw: Setting aside your own fixed beliefs, please explain why you do not think my “simplest explanation” is feasible. Brief summary: God did not want a dull Garden of Eden, but wanted an unpredictable mixture of good and bad (you can’t appreciate the one without the other), and therefore gave organisms the means of steering their own evolutionary course, as exemplified by human free will.

DAVID: God-given human free will and the enormous range of conscious conceptualization we possess is the answer to your thoughts. God speciates as I view it. Organisms can not steer. As above, too complex.

You have not answered at all. I have offered you an explanation for theodicy: God did not design the good and the bad – he gave them the means of designing themselves, just as you think he gave humans free will. The fact that this doesn’t fit in with your own fixed beliefs does not mean that the proposal is not feasible.