More miscellany (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, July 21, 2024, 08:40 (123 days ago) @ David Turell

Back to David’s theory of evolution

DAVID: You misunderstand. On Earth we evolve many items. That is my reference.

dhw: […]We only know of one evolution which you assume has been invented by an omnipotent, omniscient, yet messy and inefficient God.

DAVID: Inventions evolve: chucks of ice to hydrofluorocarbon refrigerators. Model T to today's luxurious sedans, early tiny black and white TV screens. Much is trial and error per Addison's quotes. I have every right to use human evolutionary efforts as a comparison!!!

“Trial and error” by a God who is supposed to be omnipotent and omniscient? At the very best, this concept would fit in with experimentation, but you keep dismissing that as “humanization”. Now you are all for “humanization” – your God provides us with a mirror image of human fallibility.

Genome complexity

dhw: […] Your God would not have enjoyed our human development if he knew all of it in advance. So don’t you think an unpredictable evolution might possibly have been more enjoyable for him than knowing all the new species, lifestyles, strategies, natural wonders etc. in advance?

DAVID: You scurry back to your humanized fellow. How do you know God requires entertainment?

Nobody even “knows” if God exists! However, the above follows on directly from your belief that your God enjoys creating, and it chimes in with your statement that your God “would not have enjoyed watching our development if he knew it all in advance”. It is not a matter of “requires entertainment”, as if somehow he’s needy. What is wrong with doing something because you enjoy it?

How we got water

dhw: I think most of us would accept that our planet and life are exceptional. How does that explain the sterility of the rest of the universe?

DAVID: […] Accept it as God's unexplainable work. I do.

dhw: I know that you are happy to accept whatever you think is God’s work, even though it makes no sense to you. You start with the God you wish for.

DAVID: Yes, a good start. Humans cannot be expected to fully explain God's works.

If what you wish for is a good start, then you can praise every prejudice under the sun.

Natural selection

DAVID: 'Natural preservation' is exactly on point. Natural selection is totally a nebulous, attractive ploy creating nothing.

dhw: Natural preservation doesn’t create anything either. Both terms boil down to exactly the same meaning: Nature determines which life forms will survive. Silly word game.

DAVID: Exactly. Both are useless.

‘Natural preservation’ is hardly ‘on point’ if it’s useless. What is “useless” is the argument that one term is wrong and the other is correct, although both have the same meaning.

Biochemical controls (99.9% versus 0.1%).

DAVID: The 99.9% are the ancestors of the living 0.1%!!!

dhw: So 696 dinosaurs which had no descendants were the ancestors of current species. Only the four species which evolved into current species were not the ancestors of current species. Astonishing!

DAVID: Snatching 696 dinos out of all evolution to complain about Raup's overall statistic's is nonsense.

There is no complaint about Raup’s statistics! The complaint is your non-sensical claim that we are descended from 99.9 species which have no descendants. Why do you keep forgetting your agreement?
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.

But now you believe that we are descended from organisms that had no descendants!

The role of viral DNA (Theodicy)

DAVID: If God is viewed as a designer, He introduced viruses as helpful design components for DNA evolution. dhw will complain about the trouble some of them cause. The answer is God's good works far outweigh the bad side effects.

dhw: Theodicy [...] asks why an all-good God would knowingly invent or allow evil, such as a flu virus that killed 50 million people. Harping on the good does not explain or justify the bad, given the conventional view of God as all-good, omnipotent and omniscient.

DAVID: Understood. A death rate of .0166% is important, but 98.44% survived.

This is just one example of “evil”. Stop pretending that the problem is solved by pretending there is no problem.

Symbiosis

DAVID: [...]The exactly required bacteria to fill the need must arrive. How does that exact solution happen? Not by chance!! A designer is required to bring the plant and bacteria to be together. From a theodicy viewpoint this is a good bacterial infection!!

Nobody would question the good that is done by bacteria. The problem is the bad, which your all-powerful, all-knowing God knew would happen but lacked the power and knowledge to prevent, or which he actually wanted.