More miscellany (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 16, 2024, 11:01 (128 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I know evil exists and we all know good cannot exist without evil. Back to proportionality.

dhw: So your omniscient God created or allowed evil because he was incapable of designing all-goodness and of preventing the evil he knew his humans would cause, which means that despite his omnipotence, he was not omnipotent. But apparently the existence of evil still means that God is all-good because there is more good than evil. It’s a wonder your Jekyll and Hyde haven’t strangled each other by now.

DAVID: Proportionality is still the answer. What you see as evil is generally a coagulation of small events, side effects of all the good.

50 million victims of God’s flu virus, 6 million Jews exterminated as a side effect of God giving humans free will...small events, not worth bothering about. But we now have your ultimate answer: your God is schizophrenic.

Back to David’s “schizophrenia”

DAVID: A perfect God picked His preferred method to evolve us, and He did it. Our human analysis notes evolution is a cumbersome method. God didn't ask for our opinion.

dhw: Then why have you expressed your opinion that your omnipotent, omniscient God’s only purpose was us, that he deliberately and knowingly designed and then had to cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with what in your opinion was his purpose, and why do you present us with your opinion that your perfect designer picked an imperfect and inefficient method to fulfil that purpose? Why can’t you see that your opinion is a complete mess of contradictions and might just possibly be wrong?

DAVID: Your usual distorted view of any evolutionary process which requires culling.

How many evolutions of life do you know of?

DAVID: As above, evolution is a cumbersome way compared to direct creation. If God chose it, it must be the best way. I am totally content with that view.

Yes, you are totally content with your view that your perfect God is not only schizophrenic but is also imperfect enough to choose a purpose and method which even you regard as inefficient. And you absolutely refuse to consider any interpretation of your God’s work that allows him to have a purpose and method which make perfect sense together.

Jumping gene controls

DAVID: Your usual distortion of evolutionary statistics. As usual, you ignored the issue of the lack of directionality/purpose in Darwin theory.

dhw: There is no distortion. You have agreed that 99.9% of past life forms did not lead to those now present.

DAVID: Agreed from the 0.1% coming from their ancestors, the 99.9%.

One of you (probably your Jekyll) agreed emphatically that 99.9% were NOT the ancestors of the 0.1%.

dhw: I note that you have now bracketed directionality and purpose together, after I had asked you to explain the difference.

DAVID: Purpose produces directionality.

So your God’s purpose was to create the 0.1% (us and our food), and his “directionality” was to create 99.9 out of 100 species that had nothing to do with his purpose. I get it. That’s why your version of God is that he is inefficient as well as schizophrenic.

DAVID: You ignored the issue of the lack of directionality.purpose kn Darwin theory.

dhw: Darwin’s theory is that all species except the very first cells evolved from preceding species. The purpose of all the changes is survival. He did not set out to write a book about the origin of life or to discuss the existence of God and what God’s purpose might have been for creating life.

DAVID: You have reintroduced our huge brain, not needed 300,000 years ago on arrival for survival in our simple life then. See other thread

I have not even mentioned our huge brain. You have launched your usual pointless attack on Darwin, and I have responded to it.

Genome complexity
QUOTE: "[…] those little regulatory RNAs are generally too small to carry enough information for their unions to be very selective; they too work collectively, arriving at a decision, as it were, by committee. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: […] You constantly bombard us with your belief that cells are nothing more than the mindless recipients of your God’s instructions. Interestingly, you also sneer at the theory that cells form interactive, thought-processing, decision-making communities, which you have scathingly called “committees”, and here, lo and behold, we have an article which actually compares their work to that of “committees”.

DAVID: I have presented it with my view unchanged.

Fine. I’m just pointing out that you have presented yet another article which rubbishes your view.

DAVID: Cells can simply follow genome directions. The only real intelligence we see requires neurons.

dhw: How do you define “real” intelligence? Why can’t “simply following genome instructions” mean that the instructions are issued by an autonomous intelligence within the cell? Neurons are also cells. Bacteria do not have them, but their ability to outwit humans is well proven – or have you now decided that God keeps telling them what to do?

DAVID: God's DNA instructions allow them to act as they do.

More obfuscation. Does God instruct them what to do, or has he given them the means whereby they can decide autonomously what to do?