Back to theodicy and David's theories (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Friday, February 12, 2021, 11:13 (1378 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Back to a God who doesn't care about what happens or is OK about directionless events.

dhw: Once again avoiding the subject of your God’s possible reasons for directly designing the bacteria and viruses that cause Covid-19, Alzheimer’s, diabetes etc. You’re sure he is interested in all this, but what are you suggesting with your “doesn’t care”? Could you be proposing that he shares such human characteristics as caring about those who are suffering?

DAVID: With God I am trapped into using humanizing words to describe His non-human state.

Nobody says he is human. But you can’t avoid human characteristics if you want to talk about his purpose! And what’s wrong with doing so? You agree that he “possibly” (previously “probably”) has human characteristics, and you even insist that you know which ones he doesn’t have! (Besides, you had him caring so much that he tried and failed to correct some of the errors resulting from his high-speed system.) But your answer does enable you once more to avoid the problem of his directly designing Covid-19 et al and your certainty that he is interested in all that’s going on but can’t have wanted to create something that would interest him.

DAVID: I must keep repeating I don't understand your illogical complaint about my logical conclusion God chose to evolve us. You simply describe evolution and complain about it.

dhw: I do not complain about your belief that God chose to evolve us. I complain about your combined beliefs that we were his one and only purpose, and yet he directly designed millions of life forms, econiches etc. which, according to you, were “part of the goal of evolving humans” although 99% of them had no connection with humans! You admit that you have no idea why he would have chosen such a method, and yet you still twist and turn in order to avoid the illogicality of your theory.

DAVID: You twist. I don't. The connection with humans is that humans evolved like everything here.

This is getting sillier and sillier. According to you he designed every life form. If his only aim was to design humans, why did he design all the extinct life forms that had no connection with humans? You have told us again and again that you have no idea, so why don’t you just leave it at that?

Coelacanth

dhw: […] would you please explain how the coelacanth constitutes “part of the goal of evolving humans”.

DAVID: Part of the ecosystem method of food supply.

All life forms are/were part of their ecosystem. That does not mean that all life forms and their food supplies were directly designed for the purpose of designing H. sapiens and his food supply.

Transposons

DAVID: Survival is not a proven theory but Darwin-speak guess work. The apes prove our brain was not needed for survival.

No they don’t. We have no idea why certain groups of apes descended from the trees, but it is perfectly feasible that local environments made it necessary or more advantageous for them to do so, while elsewhere apes were perfectly fine as they were. What do you think would have been the main preoccupation of the earliest hominins?

Insect plasticity

DAVID: As butterflies enter new environments their brains change:
DAVID: I'll stick to brain plasticity is widespread.

dhw: Of course it is. And the plasticity allows life forms to make changes to themselves as they “enter new environments” – as opposed to your God having to preprogramme or dabble all the changes before they “enter new environments”. And this process has gone on for thousands of millions of years, involving millions of life forms that no longer exist and had no connection with humans, and yet you stick to your mantra that all of them “were part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans.”

DAVID: See my new entry on DNA pre-planning. You always seem to forget that bacteria are here successfully since the beginning. Their example offers no reason for evolution going any further, does it?

I never stop reminding you, because they are the living proof that NONE of the later life forms were "needed", and so it is absurd to argue that humans are special because their brain was not "needed". They are special because they have unique qualities.

DAVID: Therefore evolution had an advancing guiding force, which is not the Darwinist survival daydream of a theory.

What “daydream”? What do you think is/was the prime driving force behind all life forms if not survival? Multicellularity – i.e. the cooperation of cell communities – clearly provided new means of survival. Or do you think every new organ and strategy and natural wonder came into existence just for the fun of it?

DAVID: Darwin wisely avoided the issue of origin of life and he doesn't ever explain how the earliest organisms had the intelligence to know how to manage an advance. Now we see DNA was setup for prompt advances. Clever designer at work.

Nobody can explain how advances take place, but those of us who believe in common descent will of course agree that the first cells must have contained a mechanism that would lead to all the advances! Cellular intelligence (perhaps provided by God) is one theory, Darwin opted for random mutations refined by natural selection, and you opt for a divine 3.8-billion-year-old programme for every undabbled change.