New Miscellany 2: brain, evolution, intelligence (General)

by David Turell , Monday, April 07, 2025, 18:18 (8 days ago) @ dhw

The human brain

DAVID: Back to second hand design, a wasteful way to proceed.

dhw: I’m pleased to see that you have now abandoned your theory that God gave the human brain its extra cells 3000 years ago because he had looked into his crystal ball and knew they would be needed thousands of years later.

God produced the complex big brain 315,000 years before its full need and use.

dhw: What you call “second-hand design” makes perfect sense if your God’s purpose was to create the free-for-all which you have accepted elsewhere as the dog-eat-dog reality of life’s history, along with the fact that by creating a free-for-all he was NOT responsible for the evil which causes so many problems for theologians who struggle to explain theodicy.

The secondhand concept of design has nothing to do with your defense of theodicy which I accept

Cellular intelligence

DAVID: See today's entry on bacterial action with ameba's at a molecular level, no thought involved.

Bacterial immunity

DAVID: Where does the article show thought processing?

dhw: Where does it show your God’s instructions? Do you or do you not agree that the molecular activity described here must follow on from processing of information, communication and decision-making? Why do you assume that bacteria, which elsewhere in your posts have “freedom of action or free will”, can think for themselves when they kill us, but can’t do so when they kill an amoeba?

DAVID: The act of poisoning us or killing bacteria is all automatic.

dhw: And so although you agree that bacteria have freedom of will and action, they kill us or one another because they have no freedom of will or action. And since you also tell us that bacteria act in accordance with your God’s instructions, it is he who instructs them to murder us, although you doubt if he would instruct them to murder us. Perhaps one day you should read your own posts.

You should read your own posts. Above is your clear defense of the point bolded..

dhw: I presented a list of your other absurd self-contradictions, but since they have nearly all been repeated in these two posts, there’s not much point in going over them again here. You summed it all up when you described your beliefs as “schizophrenic” and admitted that you “first choose a God I wish to believe in. The rest follows.” What follows is sheer confusion.

DAVID: I am not confused about my God.

dhw: No, you are only confused about his purpose, methods and nature, which is why you keep contradicting yourself as well as ridiculing him with your various theories that reduce YOUR all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good, all-controlling God to YOUR messy, cumbersome, inefficient and incompetent blunderer. (The adjectives are all yours, not mine.)

I am not confused about God. His nature, purpose and methods are quite clear to me. And yes He uses a confusing evolutionary method to produce us.