More miscellany (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, July 17, 2024, 13:23 (127 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: God is not schizophrenic, but I approach God in two ways, as a believer and as a sceptic.

You have never been sceptical about your God’s existence, and your view of him as a schizophrenic is covered on the evolution thread. Meanwhile, why do you rate the 50 million flu deaths and the extermination of 6 million Jews as small events which should be ignored in a discussion on theodicy?

Back to David’s “schizophrenia”
DAVID: Your usual distorted view of any evolutionary process which requires culling.

dhw: How many evolutions of life do you know of?

DAVID: The one we both know.

So please stop talking about “any evolutionary process”. Your God invented a system which, according to you, required designing and then culling 99.9 out of 100 species because they were irrelevant to the purpose you impose on him. What have I distorted?

dhw: […] 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.

DAVID: Your interpretations humanize God.

You have agreed explicitly that your God may have human-like attributes, and so you can hardly dismiss my alternatives on the grounds that they entail human-like attributes.

Jumping gene controls
dhw: You have agreed that 99.9% of past life forms did not lead to those now present.

DAVID: The 0.1% must have ancestors!!! The 99.9%!! Simple math: all of evolution is 100%, isn't it?

Your God culled 99.9% because they had no connection with us and our food. We and our food are descended from the 0.1% of survivors, not the 99.9% that you say he culled. Yet again, listen to yourself:

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

So please stop contradicting yourself!

DAVID: Purpose produces directionality.

dhw: 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: God is not schizophrenic. I have a split approach to Him.

Dealt with in the first “evolution” post.

Genome complexity

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.

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

DAVID: The cells follow information/directions in the genome. They appear intelligent because their directions are intelligently designed.

Yet more obfuscation.You have simply changed “instructions” to “information/ directions”. Now please answer my bolded question.

How we got water

DAVID: Hydrogen and oxygen were among the earliest elements formed. And combined as H2O they create a miracle liquid which is found all over the universe. It is 70% of our surface. Our supply suggests the Earth was especially designed for life to appear.

And the rest of the universe was especially designed for life not to appear?

Why did self-awareness evolve?

QUOTE: "Key to achieving a more scientific explanation of subjective awareness requires accepting that biology and culture work collectively to shape how brains evolve. Subjective awareness comprises only one part of the brain's much larger mental architecture designed to facilitate species survival and wellbeing."

DAVID: social animals like bonobos live in social groups without our self-awareness. All ape families are in groups, as are many monkey species. These authors have it all backwards. Our complex brain gave us these unnecessary gifts from design. But I agree societal interaction aids survival.

Much ado about something, telling us absolutely nothing. We've already covered the subject of dualism versus materialism in depth, and the fact is that nobody knows how ANY level of consciousness has arisen, from the most primitive (Shapiro and Co’s intelligent cells) through to us. Of course biology and culture work together; culture is just part of the environment the response to which determines how all organisms and brains evolve. That tells us nothing about how consciousness arose in the first place, let alone how or why our own LEVEL of consciousness developed.