More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, September 29, 2024, 09:04 (53 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.

dhw: ...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.

DAVID: Where did the 'cell designing species' ability go? Not here now. May not have existed in the past.

It continues to show itself in adaptations, but we are going through a period of stasis as regards new speciation. Where did your dabbling God go? Not here now? May not have existed in the past?

DNA hunts pathogens

If the immune cells fail:

DAVID: God gave the cells full instructions […] it is not God’s fault if the immune cells fail.
And:
DAVID: In my view the cell’s fault since they follow full instructions.

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

DAVID: No. The bugs are pretty smart in your proposed current free-for-all.

So the bugs outsmart the omniscient God who created them?

Early mammalian evolution

DAVID: God experimented by choosing evolution as His method and to achieve His purpose. […]

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.
You then revert to the 99.9% ancestry dealt with comprehensively on the “evolution thread”, and repeat your theory that “all of evolution produced vegetables and animals for human use.”

dhw: [...] 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. […]

DAVID: Of course evolution is inefficient system, and why I question God's choice.[…].

It is you who make evolution inefficient, on the grounds that your God has a messy way of achieving the purpose you impose on him. You refuse to consider the possibility that either your choice of purpose or your choice of method (design and cull) or both might be wrong!

Biochemical controls

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

If nothing existed before your omnipotent God created it, whatever became “available” could only be what he wanted to create. Why would an all-knowing God be forced to create something he didn’t want to create???

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.” […] ..

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

dhw: 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?

DAVID: Part of a necessary ecosystem.

Necessary for what? Do you think your God designed the walking fish for the one and only purpose of serving us?

Correcting haemophilia B

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I stand alone.

I’m surprised you’re still standing after shooting yourself in the foot so many times.

The microbiome in the brain

DAVID: […] another example of bugs wandering into bad places. Which leads into the usual theodicy discussion.

It’s another example of bugs that attack us and bugs that defend us, and all of them are simply fighting for their own survival in their own particular ways. Your theodicean explanation varies wildly from blaming God for creating them, prevention of boredom, being forced to use the only system available to him, inability to rectify the mistakes in the system he created (but faith in humans to do what he, despite his omniscience, can’t do), and being so perfect that we should forget about the imperfections.