Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, February 09, 2023, 08:15 (651 days ago) @ David Turell

More repetition, so I’ll try to avoid some of it.

DAVID: Your God is given surrogate ways of producing evolution as if His hands don't touch the process.
And:
DAVID: Suddenly a 99.9% failure rate disappears into a concocted theory that God has hands off.

In two of my theistic alternatives (experimentation and new ideas) his figurative hands are on, but the non-survival of 99% of his designs is neither a mistake nor a failure. Only the free-for-all is hands off, unless he wants to dabble. Now please tell us why a God who makes mistake after mistake is more godlike than a God who makes no mistakes.

DAVID: What don't you understand about a God who can design for any conditions? Severe environments don't stop God from working designs […]

You call his experiments failures and mistakes because they had no connection with his sole purpose: us and our food. Your all-powerful, always-in-control God’s inability to control the environment meant that he could only design species that suited the conditions, as opposed to species that would lead to us and our food – hence the pathetic “new attempts” mentioned below. Hurray for his ability to adapt his designs to whatever conditions chanced to arrive, but boo for his failure after failure – not to mention his lack of control – in his messy attempts to achieve his sole purpose.

Extremophiles

DAVID: The 99% failures evolved our existing food!!! That is the blank spot in your thinking.

dhw: This is getting ridiculous. You have agreed over and over again that the 99% did not evolve into anything – they were dead ends! If they had evolved into our current food, they would not have been mistakes/ failures!

DAVID: You have lost the concept of evolution completely. What cannot continue to survive sets the conditions necessary for new attempts. Evolution is a progression of simple forms to more complexity of forms. Failure drives the process, per Raup.

Species go extinct because they cannot survive new conditions. They don’t “set” the new conditions! Nor, according to you, does your God. And extinct forms do not evolve into new forms. Only the one per cent of survivors can evolve into new forms. See birds below.

DAVID: Living organisms can find many different ways to live. Adverse climates can be conquered by living organisms. It explains why God does not have to control all climates as dhw worries. God's supreme design of living organisms takes care of it.

dhw: Apply your comment to "cellular intelligence" instead of "living organisms", as means of finding their own “different ways to live” or to “conquer adverse climates”, and you will see how perfectly it fits

DAVID: Cells which manufacture products intelligently at high speed do not have the design intelligence to create new forms. You have an invented theory of no substance. Except for Shapiro's unsupported conjecture there has been no other response to him. […]

dhw: Please stop pretending that Shapiro is the only scientist to believe that cells are intelligent. You have said that “adverse climates can be conquered by living organisms”. Extremophiles prove your point. Yes, they find different ways to live. Why must your God find their ways for them? Is every extremophile an absolute requirement for us and our food? Or one of your God's 99% mistakes?

Not answered.

DAVID: Please remember evolution works from a failure to survive, so the next stage overcomes the past deficiencies. Most dinosaurs disappeared but are still here as birds!!!

As usual, you avoid my question. Evolution does NOT work from a failure to survive! Evolution can only work through those organisms that do survive! Most dinosaurs are NOT still here as birds. We’ve been through this before. Wikipedia: Coelurosauria is a subgroup of theropod dinosaurs that includes compsognathids, tyrannosaurs, ornithomimosaurs, and maniraptorans; Maniraptora includes birds, the only known dinosaur group alive today.

In other words, the evolution of birds took place through the only surviving subgroup of a subgroup of dinosaurs. In any case, common sense should tell you that the dead do not produce the living.

Conflict

DAVID: the paper recognizes the propensity of any form of evolution to evoke conflict. God's form was/is dog-eat-dog at a fight for survival level. God's form resulted in a 0.1% survival rate, yet it achieved its goals.

There’s no doubt that evolution is a fight for survival, whether through conflict or cooperation (see Margulis’s emphasis on symbiotic relationships. She also believed in cellular intelligence). Unless your God fixed every fight, you are still left with his dependence not only on conditions beyond his control, but also on the luck which determined which dog survived to enable him to keep blundering on in his efforts to achieve his one and only goal.

DAVID: […] I view it as God knowing what He was doing. dhw is bent all out of shape because he thinks it makes God look bad. I am happy with my God-view. That is because of the way I picture God' personality. dhw's view of God is his own personal invention that never approaches any way I think about God and His personaity.

I do indeed think that mistakes, failed experiments, mess, lack of control, dependence on luck etc. make your God look bad, but that is your “personal invention”.