More Miscellany: Bechly reappears (General)

by dhw, Saturday, June 22, 2024, 08:39 (99 days ago) @ David Turell

Oxidation

DAVID: Not a dodge. Ignoring your baseless distortion of evolutionary statistics from Raup.

dhw: There is no distortion other than your own. Raup says that the 99.9% of extinctions are caused by changing conditions, and the survival of the 0.1% is a matter of luck. I have no problem with this argument. You, on the other hand, introduce your God (never mentioned by Raup) and interpret the statistics as meaning that God had to obey some weird law that forces him to design and cull 99.9% of life forms irrelevant to his purpose. Sheer nonsense.

DAVID: No weird law, but simply an all-perfect God choosing the best way. You don't know how to think about God in true theological ways.

Please stop pretending that you and you alone know the “true” theological way. Go to any church, synagogue or mosque and inform the vicar, rabbi or imam that God certainly has no human attributes, and therefore certainly doesn’t love us, care for us, or want us to worship him. As for evolution, please tell us how many theologians you know who inform us that their God used an imperfect, inefficient method to produce us, having designed and had to cull 99.9 out of 100 life forms although he could have produced us "de novo".

“Overblown Darwin-speak”

Headline: Evolution repeats itself.

DAVID: The headline touted evolution and then proceeded to define intraspecies adaptations. You wouldn't recognize Darwin-speak if it slapped you in the face.

dhw: The article went on to attack Darwin’s theory of randomness. The established fact that evolution repeats itself is not “touting” Darwin’s theory. You yourself constantly tell us that your God used evolution to produce the universe, the planet, and all life forms, including us. Are you touting Darwin’s theory?

DAVID: I refer to Darwin's theory properly, pointing out its inefficiency in explaining evolution.

How does the statement “God used evolution to produce humans” point out the inefficiency of Darwin’s theory. How does the statement “evolution repeats itself” tout the efficiency of Darwin’s theory? Your complaint that these three words are phony, overblown Darwin-speak propaganda is overblown anti-Darwin propaganda. I suggest we drop this subject as it's leading us nowhere.

Black holes

DAVID: So, your human mind thinks God did it wrong. That is why God is incomprehensible to you.

dhw: You insist that God created the billions of stars etc. and the 99.9% of extinct species for the sole purpose of designing us plus our food, you can't tell us why, and you even tell us that his method was imperfect and inefficient, and then you tell me that I think he did it wrong! No, YOU do! I have no idea why he would have created the billions of stars etc., and they are a factor in my uncertainty over his existence. However, as far as the 99.9% are concerned, I have offered you three THEISTIC reasons for their existence and extinction, but you prefer your own theory that God made a mess of things.

DAVID: Your humanizing theories of God show your lack of theological instruction in this area of thought.

As above: If you preached your theories about God’s inefficiency and your certainty that he has no “human” attributes like love, or wanting to be worshipped, you would be laughed out of every church, synagogue and mosque in the world.

Brain stem controls

DAVID: […] Our brain is not explainable by Darwin theory. Why? Based on survivability it is overkill. Apes and Chimps could easily have continued on their own without us barging in.

dhw: The complexities of the mouse brain are also unexplainable by Darwin’s theory of random mutations. But all its complexities have been passed on to us, which would seem to confirm Darwin’s theory of common descent. You have also confirmed that early sapiens would have used their brains primarily for survival. I have never disagreed that we have special gifts. I only disagree with your belief that your God must have specially dabbled them, and that we and our brains (plus our food) must have been his one and only purpose.

DAVID: I think we were His prime purpose.

Please tell us his other purposes - especially for designing the 99.9% of species unconnected with us.

DAVID: Our very special brain proves it. The mouse brain cannot design commercial aircraft. It is only competent for mouse survival.

Nobody would claim that mice are as intelligent as humans. Yes, our brains are special. Now tell us why he also specially designed and had to cull the 99.9 out of 100.

Intelligence

dhw: You agree that solving problems, taking decisions etc. denote autonomous intelligence in our fellow animals. Thank you.

DAVID: I'm sure they have some simple solutions to simple challenges.

Excellent news: our fellow organisms have autonomous intelligence. So now it’s a matter of the degree of autonomous intelligence. For instance, how about ants?

DAVID (under “ant intelligence” which went off subject:): The issue remains, God is unknowable, but we can guess at His purposes from His creations.

And we can guess at his methods and his nature, and since nobody knows the truth, it is utterly absurd to pontificate that he is certainly not human in any way.