More "miscellany" PART ONE (General)

by David Turell @, Saturday, December 10, 2022, 17:28 (475 days ago) @ dhw

PART ONE

DAVID: Bad luck, per Raup, simply ends a species. God in tight control evolves new species and allows bad luck.

dhw: But if he exists, he evolves new species out of those species that have survived – hence the continuity of evolution. And if he does not control which species survive (and just as importantly, does not control what environments come and go), he is dependent on luck to provide him with the species and conditions he can develop into us and our food. So much for tight control!

DAVID: You take away controls from God, so He is not in control. Your inventions. Not a substantive argument. Just fiat.

dhw: It is you who take away his controls when you tell us he relies on bad luck and on chance changes to the environment.

God knows what to expect in these various evolutionary outcomes and steers the course of evolution to reach his goal, us.


Bacterial intelligence: stress responses (Animals)

DAVID: Cells in multicellular organisms don't need bacterial survival processes. However they evolved they are protected and don't need them.

dhw: I didn’t say they needed “bacterial” processes. My point is that if your God gave single cells (in this case bacteria) autonomous means of protection, why do you think he would not have done the same for all cells, whether single or in cooperating communities? It is not an explanation to announce that they didn’t need such abilities. If your God gave them to bacteria, why couldn’t he have done the same for other cells instead of individually designing every innovation, strategy, lifestyle, solution, natural wonder etc. himself?

DAVID: A practical designer produces only what is needed. Direct design is more efficient than secondhand design, your obvious proposal to get rid of any need for God.

dhw: So your practical designer produced countless life forms that were not needed for his one and only purpose of designing us and our food! If your God designed a mechanism because he wanted to create a free-for-all, with all kinds of species eating one another in a great battle for survival, (a) he WANTED second-hand design, and (b) this does not mean getting rid of God.

DAVID: How (a) is logically supported by your comment, is beyond me. Free-for-all as in dog-eat-dog is what happened and what survives is the result. New species are a different issue and I see God speciating according to His plan. Secondhand design means God's role is reduced significantly.

dhw: As regards (a), if your God wanted a free-for-all, he wanted what you call second-hand design, i.e. that different life forms should be free to design their own means of attack and defence. And yes indeed, dog-eat-dog = a free-for-all, and survival or death is the result. You believe that evolution is a continuous process, i.e. your God made changes to existing organisms in order to turn them into new species. But in order to do this, he could only change the “dogs” that had survived the process of dog-eat-dog plus all the chance changes in the environment. And if both factors were a matter of luck, outside his control, his “plan” depended on luck. Of course if he decided to give cells autonomous intelligence, he deliberately reduced his “role”. Why shouldn’t he?

It all depends upon what 'free-for-all' is referring to. If it is dog-eat-dog, that is the everyday world. If it refers to speciation, my position remains the same: God, in control,
speciates


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