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

by dhw, Tuesday, February 20, 2024, 11:10 (275 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: I like your first sentence, and I am discussing this with you, not with Behe.

DAVID: Stop it!! Behe's thoughts, as an expert in the field, are cogent. All my thinking is based on expert science.

I can only deal with your arguments and discuss what you believe. I have no idea how expert science can tell us that God does large steps etc., and I seem to remember Dawkins also telling us that his views are based on expert science.

dhw: 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.

An all-important point, which I am now bolding.

dhw: 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?

DAVID: Free-for-all has the word free in it, free from control! No!

That is why it is important to establish what you meant by “automaticity”. You said “without designer intervention”. That can only mean that your designer relinquished control. But please note my proviso (he could dabble – which = take control – if he wished to). For example, in the context of your anthropocentric theory, dinosaurs, the vast majority of which were dead ends that led nowhere, could be explained as part of the great free-for-all, but then your God decided to “cull” them because he wanted evolution to go in a different direction. Hence the Chixculub “dabble”.

dhw: 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?

DAVID: You and I use autonomous in a different way. A bacteria coded for automatically recoding DNA is then autonomous in my way of understanding the word. I understand how you see the twigs as autonomous.

We’ve already covered your attempt to reverse the meaning of “autonomous” elsewhere. What did you mean by “automatic experimentation”? Were the irrelevant species (the dead-end twigs) the product of a free-for-all, i.e. doing their own experimenting (your God having given them the ability to do so)? If God himself was experimenting, then it could hardly have been automatic. I’m just asking what you meant by the term, since experimentation ties in with two of my alternative explanations for the twigs.

Purpose

DAVID: 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!

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Nothing about God is fact. My God is selfless, does not need anything for Himself and your God is needy as you describe His wants and intentions.

Wanting to be worshipped, to have his work recognized, to have a relationship with us, enjoyment of creating and interest in his creations – these were all YOUR “guesses”, which I find perfectly understandable and reasonable. But they are not selfless. Yet another example of Turellian self-contradiction, for which you are trying to blame me!