More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, September 28, 2024, 08:40 (20 days ago) @ David Turell

Disordered proteins (and glue your predator)

DAVID: […] In your view God started evolution and then let it run on its own.

In your view, your first-cause, omnipotent God is reluctantly forced by laws of his own making to create a system full of mistakes which he cannot correct (but we can), and to design and cull 99.9 out of 100 species that are irrelevant to his one and only purpose. I propose that a first-cause, omnipotent God would create what he wanted to create. You have stated that his life forms have freedom of action like ours. That indicates a free-for-all. So one of my alternative theistic theories of evolution is that he gave the cells of which all forms of life are composed the wherewithal to do their own designing. At least that would spare your perfect, omnipotent God from all the accusations of inefficiency and impotence that you make against him.

DNA hunts pathogens

DAVID: God gave the cells full instructions no current dabbling needed. […] It 1s not God's fault if the immune cells fail.

dhw: If your God gave your automatons instructions on how to deal with every problem but his instructions didn’t work, then of course it’s his fault. But if he gave them the means to work out their own solutions and they failed to do so, then it’s their fault.

DAVID: In my view the cell's fault since they follow full instructions.

If they follow God’s full instructions and fail, doesn’t that suggest to you that the instructions were wrong?

Early mammalian evolution

DAVID: God experimented by choosing evolution as His method and to achieve His purpose. You constantly bring up my point of view. And constantly refuse to recognize God carefully supplied humans with all their needs.

dhw: So you do accept the theory that he had to experiment in order to produce us, and that would explain why he created and then culled the 99.9% of life forms that did not lead to us. (Previously, you rejected the whole concept of experimentation on the grounds that your God was omnipotent and omniscient.)

No reply.

dhw: I have no idea why you think that the 3+ thousand million years’ worth of comings and goings were all geared to supplying us with our needs, although 99.9% of life forms had no connection with us and our needs. […]

DAVID: All of evolution produced vegetables and animals for human use. Existing life evolved the Earth for human use. The 99.9% as ancestors are very important. You invented the idea of tossing out necessary ancestors.

So your omnipotent, omniscient God, whose one and only purpose was to design us and our food, deliberately designed and then “had to cull” (your own words, not mine) 99.9% of the species he had designed in what you have called an imperfect, messy, cumbersome, inefficient way of achieving that purpose. The 99.9% of all life forms that ever lived were not our ancestors, as you have agreed. We are descended from the 0.1% of survivors. It is you who invented the idea of your perfect but imperfect God having to cull the 99.9% who were not our ancestors. Please stop contradicting yourself.

Biochemical controls

DAVID: […] 'God designed the only form that can work from His omniscience and omnipotence. You have not accepted or rebutted this major point.' Can you try to?

dhw: Why should I try to accept that an omniscient and omnipotent God is incapable of correcting the mistakes he was forced to make, and even relies on us to humans to do what he can’t do? (See “theodicy”.)

DAVID: Because theoretically an omniscient God would use the only system available, and had editing systems in place. Still not perfect, but the ONLY way.

Theoretically a first-cause omniscient, omnipotent God was not confronted with an available system but would have invented whatever system he wanted. Theoretically a perfect God would not design an imperfect system, and rely on humans to correct it.

Walking fish

QUOTE: “…the new things have come by taking a tool kit of preexisting genes and deploying them in new ways.”

dhw: I’m reminded very strongly of Shapiro: “Evolutionary novelty arises from the production of new cell and multicellular structures as a result of cellular self-modifications and cell fusions.” […] one can’t help wondering why God – if he exists – would preprogramme or dabble such oddities if his sole purpose was to produce us and our food. How about the possibility that God […] gave cells the powers described by Shapiro, as part of a great free-for-all that would account for all the oddities and all the species that come and go?

DAVID: Shapiro's theory is still all theory. The walking fish fit into a necessary ecosystem.

The God theory is still all theory, and your theory of divine instructions and dabblings is all theory, and why is the walking fish “necessary” for our existence?

Correcting haemophilia B

DAVID: Here is a clear example of humans clearing up an error in God's systems.

What next? Are you going to compile a list of illnesses which we humans manage to cure, together with a list of those we haven’t managed to cure, and then inform us they all prove how perfect, omnipotent and omniscient your God is? No wonder you tell us no schools of theology think as you do.