Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Monday, October 11, 2021, 11:18 (930 days ago) @ David Turell

Survival
dhw: I asked if you thought your God changed pre-whale legs into flippers in order to improve their chances of survival. You said he did. This means you think your God does his dabbles (speciation) in order to improve an organism’s chances of survival. It does not mean that survival has nothing to do with the appearance of new species.

DAVID: Pure quibble. Survival is not the driver of evolution is my only point.

dhw: It is not your only point. On Monday 27 September you wrote: “Survival has nothing to do with the appearance of new species.” That is what I object to, since you yourself believe that your God provides organisms with new features in order to improve their chances of survival.

DAVID: My point remains: God drives evolution, survival doesn't.

Your point was also that “survival has nothing to do with the appearance of new species.” You have accepted that if your God exists, and if he designed the innovations that have led to new species, the whale’s flippers were designed to improve its chances of survival. So do you now accept that there is a causal link between innovations and improving chances of survival?

Crocodiles change skull forms
dhw: Where you and I disagree is on the potential of the mechanism that produces variations: if the cells can reorganize themselves autonomously in this minor manner (I presume you agree they are not preprogrammed to do so and your God does not do a dabble), then perhaps they are also capable of major reorganization when required or allowed to do so by major changes in the environment.

DAVID: Your hopeful bold is simply hope. Since Darwin's time, no evidence.

dhw: And what evidence is there that instead of giving cells autonomous intelligence, your God devised a 3.8-billion-year-old programme for every single innovation, or came along and did a dabble for those he hadn’t programmed. If the one is “simply hope”, then so is the other.

DAVID: Mine is straight biochemistry, which requires a designer.

As usual, you dodge the issue. Autonomous intelligence does not exclude God the designer. It simply changes the method he used to fulfil his purposes.