Return to David's theory of evolution PART 1 (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, April 08, 2022, 08:10 (748 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Secondary is obvious in my view of God. God purposefully creates as a primary event. His own responses to the results occur after creation.

dhw: Of course responses to results come afterwards. But why do you insist that the results of an action have nothing to do with its purpose?

DAVID: Why can't you separate purpose from reaction?

Your usual dodge of “answering” a question by asking a question! I’ll be frank: I can’t imagine a supremely intelligent mind conducting the following monologue in stages: “1) I must create. 2) Wow, I enjoyed that, and I’m interested in what I created. 3) I must create. 4) Wow, I enjoyed that, and I’m interested in what I created. 5) I must create. 6) Wow, I enjoyed that, and I’m interested in what I created…” Repeated countless millions of times.I think it more likely that he would have begun by saying to himself: “I would like to create things that I will enjoy creating and that I will find interesting.”

dhw: [...]Why do you wish to downplay the possible implications of your own guesses?

DAVID: They are your implications coming from your biased view of a humanized God. I carefully avoid granting those human responses to God's reasoning.

dhw: Since you’re sure he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, and may even want us to admire his works, clearly your careful avoidance of the implications is due to your biased conviction that your God creates "without self interest".

DAVID: I'm not 'sure' creating and desiring interest have any role in God primarily creating. That is how you humanize Him.

You already humanized him when you said you were sure he enjoyed creating etc. But I don’t ask you to be sure that this was his purpose – I offer it as a theory that fits in perfectly with your own guesses, and would help you out of your dreadful dilemma of having him design countless organisms that had no connection with what you believe to have been his one and only purpose (us and our food).

God's choice of war over peace

DAVID: Just a big IF based on your strange desire to have God give up control over speciation. That desire weakens God? Is that what you want?

dhw: It’s not a desire but a theory to solve the problem of theodicy. How does the decision to create a free-for-all denote weakness? Your version of God has him designing a system resulting in errors he can’t control, though he tries to correct them and sometimes fails. That’s what I would call weakness.

DAVID: My view is the system works. A biochemical system of life requires massive numbers of reactions at nanosecond speed. Rare mistakes that get past editing add up to cloud your biased viewpoint.

I have simply suggested that a God who creates what he wants to create (a free-for-all) seems to me to be far less weak than a God who creates what he doesn’t want to create – namely, the “rare” errors that cause crippling diseases and millions of deaths. Sorry if that seems to you like bias.

Shapiro

DAVID: You have conflated his theory for speciation into brilliant cells running the show in the everyday processes of life.

dhw: You are conflating two different subjects. When cellular intelligence explains evolution, I follow his theory of evolution. When we discuss everyday processes, I follow not just Shapiro’s view but that of many other scientists that cells are intelligent. What would be the point of cellular intelligence if it was not involved in everyday processes?

DAVID: We disagree on cell intelligence which obviously can be purely cell instructions.

I know you disagree with the theory. Will you now please stop telling me that I inflate and misuse it.

Learning how proteins work

DAVID: A study in automaticity of molecules:
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-abundant-secret-doors-human-proteins.html

DAVID: This is a study of how protein molecules automatically react in living processes. This automaticity is required to allow the fantastic speed of the processes , a speed that is required for life to exist.

dhw: You constant pick on examples of automatic behaviour, and I constantly reiterate that of course much of cellular activity has to be automatic, because otherwise the system will break down. There are two contexts in which intelligence comes into play: 1) the origin of every activity; 2) how cells respond when things go wrong. An analogy would be a factory. It takes intelligence to design the machinery, things then work automatically, and only when something goes wrong is intelligence required. You have the same theory, but attribute each stage to your God's direct intervention.

DAVID: And your analogous intelligence arose how?

Sorry, I forgot to mention that the theistic version is that God would have designed it.