Return to David's theory of evolution and purpose (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, February 19, 2024, 11:27 (278 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I can see some degree of automaticity in speciation may have created unwanted twigs.

dhw: Please explain what you mean by “automaticity” here? Do you mean that species were given the power to design themselves? Who or what would be conducting the experimentation?

DAVID: The issue is how much speciation ability organisms had in the past, if any or not.

dhw: Yes, that is one alternative. Another is the possibility that your God was experimenting.

DAVID: Following your line of thought re brilliant cell committees, that raises the possibility of an organism creating new species for God to judge. Small steps are a possibility.

dhw: I don’t know where “judgement” comes into it. Shapiro’s theory is that intelligent cells designed the “novelties” of speciation. If your God gave cells the autonomous ability to make small steps, it must have been possible for him also to give them the autonomous ability to make large steps. (See dualism for the meaning of “autonomy”.)

DAVID: Anything is possible. God judges evolution as it progresses. Behe shows evolution progresses in small ways without designer intervention. So, the theory becomes: God does large steps and watches as tiny steps happen to be sure they are correct.

I like your first sentence, and I am discussing this with you, not with Behe. First of all, “a degree of automaticity in speciation may have created unwanted twigs” suggests that God did not create all the unwanted twigs, but the word “automaticity” is not clear. In this latest response you say “without designer intervention”, and that means a degree of autonomy, not automaticity. So it is now possible, in your eyes, that your God may have created some kind of free-for-all, and that would account for the vast majority of species which you believe were irrelevant to his one and only purpose. Forget large and small. We know that most dinosaurs did not lead to us and our contemporaries, so he could have watched the free-for-all and then dabbled in order to “cull” them, except perhaps for the birds. So do you now accept the possibility that your God set in motion a free-from-all, with the proviso that he could dabble if he wished to?

You also wrote: “How much the twigs came from some degree of automatic experimentation I see as a possibility.” We can discuss the implications of “experimentation” next time, but again I’d like to know what you meant by “automatic”? A misprint for “autonomous” perhaps?

Purpose

dhw: It was you who proposed that he wanted worship, recognition and a relationship! And you may well be right. They would all be very understandable motives for his creating us (if he exists). You keep telling us that your God is all-purposeful, and that his “main purpose” was to create us. But now you refuse to consider the obvious point that he must have had a purpose for wanting to create us (and for wanting us to be the dominant species in charge of the Earth). Your proposals concerning worship etc. are perfectly reasonable, but of course they are a problem for you because they run counter to your preconception of God as being without self-interest.

DAVID: Study the endpoint! God put us here with the brains to run the Earth, His favored planet. All the rest is 'purhaps'! Did He want "worship, recognition and a relationship" is all guesswork I proposed when you questioned His reasons. Guesses you elicited! Not fact!

It is not a fact that God put us here to run the Earth, but even if he did, what would his purpose have been? And yes, I asked you why you thought he might have wanted to create us, and worship etc. was your answer. Why are you blaming me for your guesses? But your guesses have landed you with a problem, because they conflict with another of your guesses which is not a fact: that God does not act out of self-interest.