

by dhw, Saturday, August 22, 2020, 11:18 (339 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Not nebulous to me. I am working on a very coherent theory to include errors in the genome during evolution. And you are helping. Genome errors during evolution require God editing is a simple response.

dhw: Glad to help. Here comes more help. Your response completely ignores my questions!

DAVID: I've edited out your reply as totally off base.

Later you write: “Forget the past as I worked it out.” And “Your confusion has helped a great deal, showing me where I have not explained errors in evolution with clarity.” My reply was in the form of two highly relevant questions concerning confusing statements in the same post: How does “new speciation” come to mean “slight variation”, and why must your God “edit” errors that are already good?

Our discussion began a month ago, when I wrote: “It is clearly absurd to argue that God could not control or correct his errors in the system he created, but then he gave cells instructions on how to control or correct the errors he could not control or correct when he created the system.” This according to you showed “a total misunderstanding of the problem”. Since then you have lurched from one contradiction to another, but even now, when I point them out, I am “totally off base”, and I am confused because you have not explained your theory “with clarity”. I’m sorry, but you have not explained your theory with clarity because it is riddled with contradictions.

Here is the theory you started out with: God designed the system, but the errors – which he could not control – were not his fault. There are two types of errors: those that affect evolution, and those that cause disease and death. The former, when beneficial, can change the course of evolution, and may even have “arranged our human evolution”, and God “allows” them to survive but destroys those that are not beneficial. (The same process as Darwin’s natural selection, and a clear argument against direct design of all species.) He was not bothered about the disease-causing errors, but provided backups and corrected what he could, which can only mean that he did bother. His lack of control showed that he was not all-powerful and was not all-knowing, and as for his reliance on chance: “What is wrong with a random chance mutation, if it fits God’s plan to be allowed to pass through??? Chance can play a role!!!” Note the emphatic punctuation.

Your current theory concerning evolution: All stages are designed completely by Him. The three question marks and three exclamation marks in defence of chance have magically evolved into: “There is no reliance on chance” (quoted from a different post), and God is back to being all-powerful and all-knowing. New mutations can theoretically be allowed by God as long as the planned overall course of evolution from bacteria to humans is not changed. Goodbye to mutations that change the course of evolution, except that in the same paragraph, errors involving “new speciation” became “slight variations”, and even now you write: “Tight editing to make sure evolution follows His plans.” Why do very slightly different mutations that do not change his planned course require tight editing? What must he corrected if, instead of changing the course of evolution, they have no effect on the course of evolution?

As far as the disease-causing errors are concerned, we are still left with the claim that he was and is not bothered about them, but he provided backups. You, who complain bitterly when I dare to propose theories entailing one or other of the human attributes you agree he probably has, then comment: “Don't you consider Him a kindly God?” Maybe he is. But how does that fit in with your repeated assertions that he didn’t care or bother about this category of “error”? And how come that he corrected what he could, left it to us to sort out the rest of the mess (he’s apparently washed his hands of it), and yet “in life the backup systems are 99.9999+% accurate”? How does a God who can’t control or even correct all these errors, but doesn’t care, come up with 99.9999+% corrections?

But apparently such questions are totally off base, and I am confused because you have not explained your theory “with clarity”. Your theory as it stands today leaves evolutionary errors with no significance at all, and disease-causing errors in a fog of uncertainty over your God’s attitude and degree of control. Maybe we should not just forget the past but forget the whole theory and move on.
DAVID: In this study errors in mouse DNA were corrected by humans. If we can do it, God could certainly have edited DNA during evolution:

QUOTE: "Inserting genetic material into the body to treat diseases caused by gene mutations can work, scientists say—but getting those materials to the right place safely is tricky.”
In your latest version, he didn’t need to edit DNA errors during evolution, but my question to you was: if he could control evolutionary errors, why couldn’t he control disease-causing errors? Your comment above should read: if humans can correct disease-causing errors, why couldn’t God?

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