More Miscellany: Bechly reappears (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 19, 2024, 12:14 (101 days ago) @ David Turell

Oxidation

dhw: I can’t help feeling that all this teeter tottering is far more redolent of experimentation than of a precise knowledge of what is required for the fulfilment of a single purpose. Would’t you agree?

DAVID: No, I would call it a designer adjusting. […]

dhw: Do you think your God specifically designed every teeter-tottering in the environmental conditions that determined survival/non-survival, or do you think he had to “adjust” to them because they were beyond his control?

DAVID: God controls all.

So in order to produce us and our food, your omniscient and omnipotent God kept changing environmental conditions and deliberately designing new species which he knew he would have to cull because they were not the species he actually wanted to design, and he deliberately kept “adjusting” for some 3+ billion years’ worth of unsuitable conditions and irrelevant species until he had finished adjusting, got rid of the 99.9% of irrelevant conditions and species, and finally produced us plus food. But this could not possibly have been a process of experimentation. It simply had to be his very own imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient way of fulfilling the one and only purpose you devised for him.

bacteria use bacteriophages in warfare (now “overblown Darwin-speak”)

DAVID: "You still don't understand I rage against Darwinists misuse of words and his theory, not himself."

It’s nice of you to stand up for Darwin, although you call his theory “undefendable”. But I still don’t understand how the straightforward statement of fact that “evolution repeats itself” can be viewed as "phony, overblown Darwin-speak propaganda”.

Common descent

DAVID: Designed common descent will look like Darwin's 'natural' common descent.

dhw: “Common descent” means that living organisms have developed from earlier ancestral forms, whether God did it, chance did it, or cellular intelligence (possibly designed by God) did it.

DAVID: Agreed.

Thank you. At least some of Darwin’s theory is therefore defendable.

Our heart differs from that of the great apes

DAVID: Chicken and egg problem: one cannot run at high speed unless one has the heart for it to begin with.

dhw: So you think your God popped in and enlarged the hearts of a group of pre-sapiens with the great news that now they could run faster. I suggest that the heart and all other cell communities (organs/organisms) RESPOND to demands (and opportunities), as opposed to them being changed in ANTICIPATION of demands (and opportunities). And I suggest that this principle underlies the whole history of evolution.

DAVID: My theory of evolution is not Godless as yours is. God designed in anticipation of use.

dhw: Please stop this constant distortion. The alternative theories I offer ALWAYS allow for the possibility of God as the designer. I am an agnostic. A God who endows his creations with the ability to change in response to new conditions is just as much a God as one who looks into his crystal ball and then dashes around to perform operations that will prepare his 0.1% of chosen species for conditions which do not yet exist. And I must confess, I find the latter considerably less feasible than the former.

DAVID: Design assumes God designs for future needs. The design of the human heart shows this. Ancestors of Lucy used running as a survival skill.

dhw: Of course once something has been designed it will be used in the future. The question is whether the designs are a response to current needs (the heart/brain complexifies as it adjusts to new requirements), or occurs in anticipation of a requirement that does not yet exist (your God looks into his crystal ball, and performs the operation in advance of need). I find the latter considerably less feasible than the former – but to each his own.

DAVID: Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Black holes

DAVID: When I say God designed it, dhw will ask why did God make it so big and complex. Why should the issue of God change the way we look at the universe? The atheist views it and accepts it as a natural result of chance events. From both viewpoints the universe simply is what it is.

Not quite. We all agree that the universe is as it is, but you as a theist insist that there is a particular purpose behind all that is – namely, the creation of us and our food. The atheist says it has no purpose. The agnostic says we don’t and can’t know if there is a purpose.