Evolution: fish to land animals transition (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, November 30, 2020, 13:51 (1235 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Under my belief system I find your objections as totally illogical. As God is in charge He does whatever He wishes for whatever His reasons happen to be.

I totally agree that if God exists, he does or did whatever he wishes or wished. But that does not mean he did what YOU say he did! How can you find my objections to your theory “totally illogical” when you cannot explain how the direct design of millions of extinct life forms and food supplies that had no connection with humans and their food supplies could have been “part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans”?

DAVID: […] Why your need for distancing Him in living designs? Trying to diminish His controls or His importance?

dhw: There is no diminution if your God decided to create a system by which his invention would be able to design all its own variations. On the “theodicy” thread you have now suggested that his powers are limited. Just like us humans, he can only act within his limitations. THAT is diminution.

DAVID: The bold is, as usual, a distortion of my statement that limitations may exist, which does not suggest they are really limited.

dhw: Nobody knows the reality, but you have made a suggestion, and I have pointed out its implications. Please don’t make a suggestion if you don’t want it to be taken seriously as a possibility.

DAVID: But you take off in your subsequent discussion as though it is probable. Possibilities should be entertained to have a fair and open discussion.

I did not say it was probable, and yes indeed, we should entertain all possibilities to have a fair and open discussion. You propose the possibility of limitations, I explain how this could lead to experimentation, and I ask for flaws in my proposal, and what other limitations you can envisage. So now you don’t want a fair and open discussion.

DAVID: Your so-called intelligent cells, without brains, would need a universe-sized instruction book to follow to mimic God's abilities in new design.[…] .

dhw: But according to you, your God did precisely that – he provided the first cells with an instruction book to be passed on for every undabbled life form, econiche, strategy and natural wonder in the history of life!

DAVID: Only a theory, not fact, of pre-planned coding.

dhw: NONE of our theories are fact! […] You have pooh-poohed the idea of cells needing a universe-sized instruction book to come up with every life form etc., but that is YOUR idea. Mine is that they work out their own designs, using their perhaps God-given intelligence. If you now wish to withdraw your theory that every undabbled life form, natural wonder etc. is preprogrammed with your God’s “universe-sized instruction book”, then by all means do so. That leaves your God dabbling every single life form etc.

DAVID: It still is either preplanned coding or constant dabbling. I do favor the latter. You can't explain the source of the intelligent actions of cells, but when forced you drag God in to stay balanced on your picket fence. But even then it is hedged with God giving second-hand inventive mechanisms, so cells sort of do it own their own, God in the background, in a secondary position for all new designs. I always see God as in primary control, but you never can accept that.

You ridiculed the idea of cells needing a universe-sized instruction book, but then it turned out this was your own idea, so you’re happy to go back to it. I’m an agnostic, and I cannot leave God out of any theory. I have proposed a God who did not want direct control, but who allowed free rein because he wanted the ever changing bush which we know from history. But it is also possible that your God was in primary control, and even that humans were his goal, as you propose. However, that leads to the problem you can never solve - why he would directly design all those millions of life forms that had no connection with humans – but I CAN solve it with another theory: that God is a learning God, not a know-all, and so either he experimented, or humans were a late arrival in his thinking. All this is “entertaining all possibilities and having a fair and open discussion” – and you try to block it at every turn with your refusal to face up to the problem just mentioned, and with your silly objection to any explanation as “humanizing” a God who probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours, and very well could think like us. And your final objection:

DAVID: Evolution from bacteria to humans is a continuum. You want to chop it up into unrelated segments when everything present is obviously related to the past.

Everything present is related to the past through common descent, but you have agreed that evolution branched out in millions of directions. There can only be one “continuum” from bacteria to humans, but the other 99% of extinct life forms, food supplies, econiches, strategies, natural wonders etc. by your own admission had no connection with humans, No connection means unrelated segments. Why do you constantly agree with these objections and then try to withdraw your agreement?