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

by dhw, Saturday, July 02, 2022, 10:57 (658 days ago) @ David Turell

Agnosticism

DAVID: Which brings you back to my question in the other thread: if it is either design or intelligent cells from God, why deny God?

dhw: After all these years, you still haven’t understood the meaning of agnosticism. Originally it referred to the impossibility of knowing whether God exists or not, but many of us prefer to say we cannot decide whether there is a God or not. That means, to use your favourite odds, 50/50. Atheists deny God. The choice of explanation for the source of life is between God(s) and chance.

DAVID: And you think both are equal possibilities.

dhw: I find both of them equally difficult to believe in, but since one of them must be true, I neither deny nor accept either of them. But I have just as much right to speculate on the possible nature, purposes and methods of a possible God as you do, and I see no justification whatsoever in your repeated suggestion that somehow my agnosticism lends validity to your illogical combination of evolutionary theories, or invalidates my own logical alternatives.

DAVID: Somehow your pattern of thought leads you to think my theories are illogical. I think I am very logical. I've never understood your disconnected view from the moment you suggested God should have directly created us.

I have never made any such suggestion! And I don't see how you can find your theory very logical when you admit that it "makes sense only to God." You continue to dodge all those parts of your theory which make no sense when combined: 1) your God’s one and only purpose for creating life was to design sapiens plus food; 2) your God individually designed every species, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder, including all those that had no connection with sapiens plus food; 3) your God directly designed some species without any precursors, but designed the only species he wanted to design (plus food) in stages. As an agnostic, I try to find solutions to the unsolved mystery of speciation (= evolution) that do not exclude God. I accept the logic of the case for design, and find Darwin’s theory of random mutations too hard to swallow. And so, to counter your absurd accusation that I know better than your God what he should have done, I am assuming – unlike you – that he would have had logical reasons for everything he did. I shan’t repeat all my alternatives, but each of them accepts one or even two of the three contradictory theories listed above. They do not say what God should have done. They offer logical explanations for what we know actually happened, and your only objection is that they entail human thought patterns which are different from the human thought patterns you attribute to him. (DAVID: “I conceded your God theories logically fit a very humanized form of a God.”)

Cellular intelligence

dhw: It is absurd to say that my 50/50 for and against God = denial of God, and it is equally absurd for you to give odds of 50/50 for and against cellular intelligence and then say you “deny” the theory. The slime mould video is just another example of the fact that you are not the only person with a “deep knowledge of the biochemistry of life”, and you cannot expect me to accept your assumption that you know more than some scientists who have spent a lifetime studying the biochemistry of life and disagree with you.

DAVID: The problem is outside appearances allow for either/or interpretations. I find an excellent interpretation is intelligently designed automaticity, as does all of the ID community. The decision should not be based on innate prejudice. Mine is based on the requirement for a designer.

The theory of cellular intelligence does not exclude your designer! Your prejudice is your assumption that the designer would not design a mechanism which would be able to do its own designing. Again, why should I accept that your “deep knowledge of the biochemistry of life” outweighs the deep knowledge of renowned experts in the field who have spent a lifetime studying the biochemistry of life?