New Miscellany 1 & 2: evolution, intelligence, humanizing (General)

by David Turell , Friday, June 06, 2025, 18:39 (15 hours, 47 minutes ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Why do you demand I read God's mind? I can't, nor can anyone else. We evolved, God did it is what I believe.

dhw: I agree that we evolved. And I have no problem with your faith that there is a God who did it. The two issues are how and why he did it. I don’t demand that you read God’s mind. I object to your insistence that YOU can read his mind: namely, that he started out with the one and only intention of producing us and our food. This makes nonsense of the rest of your theory: that despite his ability to produce species “de novo”, he produced and had to cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had nothing to do with his one and only purpose. You admit that you can’t see any sense in it, but you would rather ridicule your God for his inefficiency than admit that your theory might be wrong.

How can my theory be wrong? Making God the controller of a known historical process, evolution, troubles you when I assign a purpose. You jump to humanizing God as entertained by the process as a free-for-all or a set up for necessary experimentation. Your God is not as a know-it-all powerful entity, but a human as mirrored by your brain. Your God is you!

Animal intelligence: the opossum

DAVID: Way too much conceptualization for a opossum. Works in your brain.

dhw: Do you think this is less credible than God saying to himself: “I must teach opossums to play dead, because otherwise wolves might kill them and eat them, and I really need them to survive so that humans can kill them and eat them”?

Not answered.

Same old. The opossum fits into a necessary ecosystem all of which support humans.

Bacterial antibiotic resistance

QUOTE: "A community’s survival often depends on communication between individuals, enabling them to share strategies to overcome stress and threats. Bacteria are no different. To survive in the face of their main enemy—antibiotics—bacteria have developed unique communication systems."

dhw: Thereby confirming your own agreement that bacteria are intelligent. And so the evidence for Shapiro’s theory continues to accumulate.

Yes, in bacteria only.

Our special feet

You believe God operated on our feet to prepare us for migration, whereas I propose that our feet adapted to the demands of bipedalism and migration. Somehow the subject has changed in what follows!

DAVID: Why do you think God is in charge? He handles issues in advance.

dhw: Why do YOU think God is in charge? I keep suggesting that he may have created a mechanism which put cell communities in charge of their own modes of survival (though he could intervene if he wished). Such an endlessly changing and fascinating free-for-all would explain why 99.9% disappeared as the mechanism eventually failed to cope with changing conditions, as he knew it would. It’s just a theory, but it fits the history, and removes all your nonsensical self-contradictions as well as your insulting references to your perfect God’s imperfection.

DAVID: Why do you apply 'fascination' to God who does not need it? More humanizing.

dhw: There you go again. You think your God may have created life because, like humans, he enjoyed creating, was interested in what he created, wanted recognition and even worship, and may or may not love us, but you refuse to believe that he might have created life and us because, like humans, he enjoys creating and is interested or fascinated by what his invention might produce. Why do you think he gave humans free will? Please answer.

God: The conceptualization capacity of our brain needs free will to work at full capacity.

DAVID: Your thinking is primarily atheistic as it comes across.

dhw: Proposals that your God might have wanted a free-for-all, or might have enjoyed making new discoveries, or experimented to fulfil a purpose, are all “primarily atheistic” are they? Will you please stop trying to defend your nonsensical theory by pretending that my alternative theistic theories are atheistic!

DAVID: They are humanizing, which NO God is.

dhw: How can a theory which proposes that – as you agree - humans may have thought patterns and emotions like those of their creator be regarded as atheistic?

That aspect does not. But you clearly dislike a God who works in designs for future use.