More miscellany (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, July 08, 2024, 09:43 (136 days ago) @ David Turell

Theodicy

dhw: […] Please stop pretending that the answer is to pretend there is no problem.

DAVID: Proportionality' admits a problem exists.

dhw: And its solution to the problem is to forget about the problem because there is far more good than evil. You have ignored at least two other common theological explanations (human free will, God’s punishment) as well as your own (God’s “challenge”, and God’s desire to make life more interesting). So much for your “standard response”.

DAVID: All apply as you point out. Proportionality is still the major answer.

For someone who prides himself on sticking to his own theology, you surprise me by your adherence to an answer which is not an answer. “Why would an all-good God create evil? Because there is a lot more good than evil.” His viruses killed 50 million people in 1918, but we can ignore that because lots more people survived. Wonderland logic!

Offshoot from Giraffes

DAVID: No contradictions: I have a religious God and a philosophical God. Two views of the same God.

dhw: In your theory of evolution, your “religious” God is perfect, omniscient, omnipotent, and handles evolution beautifully, while your “philosophical” God is imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient. That is your “dichotomy”, or your schizophrenic Jekyll and Hyde, but still you refuse to acknowledge the blatant contradiction, and refuse to consider the possibility that your theory might be wrong.

DAVID: Any theory might be wrong. I have preferences and you can't find any.

I have offered you three alternatives which make perfect sense even to you, but you prefer a theory which is riddled with contradictions and even goes so far as to ridicule your perfect God by underlining his imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient design which you also call beautiful.

Plants control water in the desert

dhw: Your Mr Hyde rules out the possibility of your God enjoying anything, because although your God probably /possibly has human-like thought patterns and emotions, he certainly doesn’t have human-like thought patterns and emotions.

DAVID: Yes, you understand my problem.

dhw: Thank you for recognizing your problem, which is the utter absurdity of trying to defend blatant contradictions in your own theories, and in opposition to alternatives. Perhaps it is time for you to open your mind.

DAVID: With two different approaches my mind is wide open.

No it isn’t. Your two “different approaches” result in a head-on collision, but you still stick to your illogical theories and reject all logical alternatives.

Introducing the brain

QUOTE: “The planarian is thus not only the first animal to possess a brain, but may be the ancestor of the vertebrate brain.”

dhw: It’s only a theory, but planarians apparently go back 839 million years, i.e. 300 million years before the Cambrian.

DAVID: […] the planarians had a very early form so the gap to Cambrian brains is still a mighty gap.

dhw: You claimed that the brain originated in the Cambrian without precursors. The article says that there were precursors. Of course there are mighty gaps between primitive early forms and later complexities, but if planarian brains may be the ancestors of vertebrate brains, we can hardly say for sure that the vertebrate brain had no precursors!

DAVID: Reaching for straws! The real precursors are early primitive neurons, not invented in the Cambrian. The Cambrians used them to produce advanced brains. This means the Ediacaran's had neurons.

What do you mean by the “real” precursors? “Advanced” brains are not “de novo” brains. The neurons and the planarian brains were clearly precursors to the advanced brains that evolved during the Cambrian, and your statement that our brain “originated in the Cambrian Explosion without precursors” is manifestly untrue.