More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, September 09, 2024, 19:36 (9 days ago) @ dhw

Black holes needed for life

DAVID: Your logic falls short. Only a conscious intelligent mind can produce the recognition of design that made you agnostic. Note the requirement for consciousness.

dhw: I have included consciousness in my summary. You believe that only a conscious intelligent mind could have designed my consciousness. But you believe that the conscious mind that created my conscious mind could simply be there without itself having been designed. Is that logical?

That is my belief in the supernatural to explain this reality.

Bacterial intelligence

DAVID: Your last sentence is the answer. Good bacteria in the wrong places are bad.
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dhw: I don’t know why you think bacteria which kill us are good bacteria obeying your God’s instructions which prove lethal because your God didn’t tell them where to go. If my last sentence is the answer, you are agreeing that both good and bad bacteria have the ability to design their own survival. It’s only we who classify them as good or bad. If they survive by killing us, then that’s good for them, and at the moment you are telling us that they only obey your God’s instructions. Or do you now think they have “minds” of their own?

You are right. If bacteria using God's instructions to survive end up in the wrong places, we call them bad.

Kamikaze termites

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

dhw: 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?

DAVID: Eventually, yes. For all the ecosystems supporting us.

dhw: Your God specially designed explosive rucksacks, fly-eating fungi and weaverbird nests because they were necessary for our existence. You don’t find this just a little far-fetched?

DAVID: No, each for God's reasoning.

dhw: According to you, your God’s reasoning is confined to designing whatever is needed for us and our food. This means that he had to design and cull 99.9 out of 100 species that were irrelevant to us and our food, but explosive rucksacks etc. are indispensable for us and our food. Not far-fetched?

Only if the relationship is very direct. It isn't as you torture reality.

Butterfly wing colors

DAVID: Does God need a human form of enjoyment? NO. Only you would make Him in that image. You invent God's needs.

dhw: And you simply ignore the fact that enjoyment does not denote need. What, in heaven’s name, is wrong with your own earlier proposal that your God might enjoy creating and be interested in his creations?

Not answered.

Previously answered, God creates without self needs.

DAVID: The concept of needs is the issue. A selfless God has no emotional needs. My prior proposals are a human wish for a relationship God may not care about. (Adler 50/50.)

dhw: On and on you go about needs. Enjoyment and interest do not denote needs! But wanting to be recognized and worshipped – two of your own suggestions – do in fact suggest possible needs, and certainly conflict with your claim that he is selfless. These possible desires of his were YOUR proposals for possible reasons why he created us – they were not our wishes for a relationship. Your description of him as “benevolent” (which would suggest loving and caring) would reflect your wishes, but while you accept Adler’s 50/50, you reject it on the grounds that your God is not human in any way, although he and we may have similar attributes. Back to your schizophrenia which you self-diagnosed and now deny.

Our wishes for God do not dictate God's personality. We can accept He creates as a starting point. After that it is all speculation.