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

by dhw, Sunday, April 10, 2022, 13:12 (956 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Once again you have God serving Himself. God may or may not enjoy or take interest.
And:
DAVID: That is your strange humanizing interpretation. We do not know if He has emotions like ours.

dhw: But not so long ago you were sure that he enjoyed and was interested, just as you thought he probably had thought patterns and emotions like ours and we mimicked him. Nobody knows anything for sure, but even now you are accepting the possibility that he enjoys and takes interest, and so it is only logical that you should also accept the possibility that enjoyment and interest might be his purpose for creating life. That is all I ask of you. I acknowledge that it’s only a theory, as is the actual existence of God.

DAVID: I do accept that possibility. Possibility is a guess. But I insist His reactions are secondary to His purpose.

Yes, all our theories can be called guesses, because nobody knows the objective truth. You now accept the possibility that enjoyment and interest might be his purpose for creating life, but you insist that his reactions of enjoyment and interest are secondary to his purpose of enjoyment and interest.

God's choice of war over peace

DAVID: Your bias is to degrade God's choice of how to create life. I think it is the only way possible or God would have found some way else. (dhw's bold)

dhw: It is you who “degrade” God’s choice and weaken his powers by even suggesting that he was forced to design a system that entailed a “constant war to survive by eating”. My suggestion is that he created the system he WANTED to create. How is that “degrading”?

DAVID: Not forced to use the best system He could invent, in His judgement, is not degrading. He decided what was best is my view.

You are now changing your argument from "the only way possible" to your God having a choice of systems (this one was best).Please make up your mind. I don’t know God’s criteria for the best and worst, but I’ll settle for your implicit confirmation that he regarded the system you call “a constant war to survive by eating” as the best. And so I wonder why, according to you, your "kind" God would deliberately choose war over peace.

Transferred from “trilobites”:

DAVID: The polar bears must eat seals. Where are the veggies? Your imagined world was not what happened. My approach is much more reasonable

Of course it’s not what happened. That is the whole point of this discussion! Why do you think your God chose to design a world of bloody warfare when, being all-powerful, he could have chosen to design a world of peaceful cooperation? You have lost track of the argument, so let me repeat: my suggestion is that he did NOT design a world of bloody warfare, but designed a world in which life forms would design their own means of survival, as a result of which we have a mixed world of peaceful cooperation and bloody warfare. And furthermore, I suggest that he created what he wanted to create (the free-for-all), as opposed to his having to incorporate errors which he didn’t want and tried, sometimes in vain, to correct because, as bolded, it was the only way possible.

Shapiro

dhw: I am delighted that you now believe bacteria are intelligent, surprised that you should think that the cell communities which evolved from them cannot be intelligent, and disappointed by your refusal to withdraw your often repeated accusation that I inflate and misuse Shapiro’s theory.

DAVID: Shapiro did not extrapolate. He simply proposed a possible mechanism for speciation.

You keep moaning that he extrapolated his theory of evolution from his study of bacteria! But yes indeed, he proposed cellular intelligence as the mechanism for speciation. Once again, I'm pleased you accept that bacteria are intelligent and am surprised that you think the cell communities which evolved from them are not intelligent.

DAVID: He never said all cells are immensely intelligent. The only extensions from his theory I can think of, is speciation must have germ cells editing their own DNA. NOT ALL CELLS. You are in error to expand his proposals way beyond his proposals!

Nobody has said “ALL cells are IMMENSELY intelligent”! Within each community they will have different functions and capabilities. I'm not sure about germ cells being "the only extension". What about stem cells, which we know can change their forms and functions? I'd have thought these would be crucial to evolutionary innovation. When I quoted Shapiro saying “cells are cognitive (sentient) entities etc.” and “evolutionary novelty arises from the production of new cell and multicellular structures as a result of cellular self-modification”, I don’t recall adding that every cell was “immensely intelligent”. Please identify the quote.