More miscellany (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, July 12, 2024, 12:27 (57 days ago) @ David Turell

Theodicy (under “the complexity of cell division”):

DAVID: Amazing that believers can live with your complaints. Proportionality is our answer.

dhw: […] Your comment is your usual dodge of repeating what you believe and trying to shut out any arguments that focus on the contradictions which make nonsense of your beliefs.

DAVID: Yes, believers recognizing your objections, still believe. What you moan about are the cumulative results of thousands of good actions which have a tiny number of side effects.

Your omniscient God’s knowing creation of murderous viruses, floods, famines, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and multiple diseases, and his foreknowledge of human evils, which he nevertheless allows to take place, raises the question of how they can be equated with an all-good God. This is the subject of theodicy. The question is not answered by pretending that the degree of evil is too “tiny” to bother about.

Back to David’s “schizophrenia”

DAVID: My God is all-powerful and omniscient. He sets goals and achieves them. We don't know if we can apply human attributes to Him.

dhw: My alternatives offer goals and achievement of goals, but without contradictions and without your ridicule of your all-powerful, omniscient God’s imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient means of achieving the goal you impose on him. Thank you for once more agreeing that we don’t know if we can apply human attributes to him, which negates your Jekyll’s belief that he is benevolent, enjoys creating, is interested in his creations and may want us to recognize and worship him, and which also negates your Hyde’s belief that your God certainly has no human attributes. (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: Your humanized God is so much like us, He can do no wrong. He responds just as we would.

Your Jekyll and Hyde are now talking simultaneous gibberish. If he’s just like us, then he is as capable of doing evil as he is of doing good – the opposite of “He can do no wrong”. Your Jekyll says he’s benevolent, your Hyde says he can’t be. Adler says 50/50. I agree with Adler. Meanwhile, what is wrong with your (Jekyll’s) bolded beliefs above? Why are you (Hyde) 100% against them? Are benevolence, enjoyment, interest, desire for recognition all evil? Can you not see that when you say your God may have human-like attributes but he can’t possibly have human-like attributes, there must be something wrong with your theories and with your attempts to dismiss my alternatives?

Jumping gene controls
QUOTES:

'Jumping genes are fascinating," says Osakabe, the first author of the paper, "because they can cause significant changes in the genome, both good and bad. Studying how proteins like DDM1 manage these genes helps us understand the basic mechanisms of life and can have important practical applications."

DAVID: Everything in the genome is there for a reason. Purposelessness in evolution does not exist, except in Darwin's theory.

You can hardly expect Darwin to have known about all the latest discoveries concerning DNA! And I have no idea why you think the drive for survival means purposelessness. Darwin does talk of vestigial structures, but as far as I remember, these are only mentioned as proof of common descent.