More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, September 07, 2024, 08:50 (75 days ago) @ David Turell

Black holes needed for life

DAVID: You don't understand belief! God created the universe as it is for His own reasons. It'd your human reasoning against God's.

dhw: "You don’t understand belief!" Some people do not believe that your God exists. Your human reasoning says design makes you believe there is a God. Their human reasoning says that (among other things) the billions of apparently lifeless stars, planets and galaxies make them believe there is no God. Please stop pretending that your belief in God makes God a reality.

DAVID: Exactly!!! My belief makes God real to me.

As you have told us many times, your starting point is what you wish to believe, and so you focus only on possible evidence for your belief. Atheists will focus on the absurdity of an unknown, sourceless being designing billions of lifeless stars etc. in order to design one tiny fraction of this infinity for the sole purpose of creating us and our contemporary species. This (among other considerations) will make God unreal to them. Would you regard this approach as acceptable? If not, why not? NB I am not attacking your faith or theirs. I am only attacking the fact that all of you pick and choose your own so-called "evidence" and attack one another for doing the same!

Bacterial intelligence (and weaverbird nests)

dhw: You said they have the ABILITY, but now you talk of instructions. There is a huge difference. Your answer to the bird question should clarify what you mean: did God give them the ability to build their own nests, or did he give them instructions for each form of nest?

DAVID: My sentence above is clear: the bird's DNA carries nest construction instructions.

dhw: Thank you for the clarification. Presumably then your God has given all bacteria instructions on whatever movements they should make in their on-going battle for survival. So did he give them instructions to infect us with fatal diseases?

DAVID: No, a side effect of His good works.

Sorry, but that is not an answer. If good bacteria survive by unthinkingly obeying God’s instructions, does that mean that your God only gave autonomous thought (intelligence) to bad bacteria?

Zombified flies

DAVID: [..] we've met these guys before in zombified ants. All parts of necessary ecosystems.

dhw: Necessary for what? Do you honestly believe that your God could not have created us humans and our food without specially designing the complexities of the fly-munching fungus?

DAVID: All part of necessary ecosystems of support.

Again, necessary for what, and to support what? (Let us not forget that your God’s one and only aim from the very beginning was to design us and our food.)

Kamikaze termites

QUOTE: "With their exploding rucksacks, older workers may instead specialize in providing a final, deadly act to defend the colony."

DAVID: this very specialized enzyme can only have appeared by design.

dhw: More evidence of the amazing social structure developed by these creatures. It’s not only their chemical expertise that boggles the mind, but also the very concept of the individual sacrificing itself for the sake of the community. These are the same insects that build whole cities, have their own farming and storage methods, and design ingenious ways of ensuring their own survival. I don’t know why anyone should assume that termites are not intelligent enough to have done their own designing.

DAVID: The biochemical complexities can only come from a designing mind.

One designing mind may have designed other designing minds, like ours, or those of our bacterial friends and enemies. And we still have the same problem as above: Termites evolved millions of years before us. Explosive rucksacks necessary for the design of humans and our food?

Butterfly wing colors

DAVID: butterfly wings are beautiful. Their purpose might be a God-given aesthetic item to enjoy.

dhw: I love it! Butterflies evolved a long, long time before we did, so if your God designed them, might it not be a sign that his purpose in designing them was to create an aesthetic item that HE could enjoy?

DAVID: Does God need enjoyment from something already in His mind's eye?

Why do you always talk of “need”? Would you collapse and die if you didn’t have the beauty of butterfly wings to enjoy? Do you think artists don’t enjoy creating something tangible that they think is beautiful? Your God would hardly have carried on creating if he didn’t enjoy it. Why is that impossible for you to believe?