DAVID: Before starting in bits and pieces rather than statements, let my note that my thinking and analysis of what God might do is under constant change, and the past quotes of mine you take from my stream of consciousness replies and gleefully present as my set-in-stone opinion are not ever permanent theory. Frankly, I'd never fully delved into the issue of molecular mistakes and God's handling of them in any thoughtful detail. What I wrote yesterday is exactly where I am at this point.
I appreciate your honesty, but wish you had written this in a different spirit. I do not gleefully present the contradictions you keep defending. We are both on a quest for logical explanations of life’s history and a possible God’s possible nature and purpose(s). You do present your opinions as if they were set in stone, and you resolutely ignore or even defend the contradictions. I try to point them out. What else can I do? No, you have clearly never delved into the issue, and I have repeatedly asked you to rethink this particular theory. Thank you for doing so.
dhw: Please explain how God “allowing” random mutations to change the course of evolution is consistent with God directly designing all life forms, including us.
DAVID: I am amazed at your statement. God is the final editor of what genomes pass on to each new level of evolution. 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!!!
There is nothing wrong with a random mutation or with chance playing a role. But if chance can play a role in changing the course of evolution, and all God can do is “allow” it to survive, then this blatantly contradicts your original theory that your all-powerful, all-knowing God had everything planned from the beginning and directly designed every species as “part of the goal of evolving humans”. Now you tell us he is not all-powerful and not all-knowing and did not directly design every species. The only way you could fit these ideas together would be if you had your God wanting to create humans but not knowing how to do it. Lucky us, a random mutation showed him the way! However, this idea is anathema to you, because despite your new theory, you still want to cling to your old theory, as is all too evident from our discussions on the other thread. Please feel free to revise one or other of these two theories.
DAVID: The dinosaur cancer dhw worries about is no issue for God to act. It was the result of copy error. The dinosaur dies, but its death has no relationship to advancing evolution. God doesn't care or even take notice. This fits our current reality. We are in charge of all health corrections, if possible.
dhw: Since all these errors take place in the same mechanism, I don’t understand how your God could have total control over the evolutionary “errors” and yet only have limited control over the disease-makers.
DAVID: I've eliminated your misuse of my old quotes. I've explained the above clearly, but will repeat again. IMHO God seriously edits evolutionary genome changes, but what happens to individual organisms is of no matter to Him, as shown by currently when we are in charge of helping.
Everything you write becomes an “old quote” the day after you’ve written it. What am I supposed to comment on if it’s not what you have written? Here you say that during evolution he didn’t care about or notice the disease-causing errors. Are you then rescinding your guess that disease began “quite early as we know of cell-splitting problems, which means bacteria could certainly have reproductive problems. […] He put in backups, so He was correcting as much as he could”? Why did he put in backups and correct as much as he could if he didn’t care?
DAVID: He has a specific goal, and He proceeded knowing fully what to expect from molecular errors. (dhw’s bold)
dhw: He could not stop the random errors from occurring but could only “allow” them to change the course of evolution, so are you saying he knew in advance which errors would be beneficial or harmful? You say you are “the one willing to show that God is not all-powerful and all-knowing and he can’t stop molecular errors in a system he created.” Please tell us, then, what your God did NOT know about the errors.
DAVID: Doesn't any coding expert know what his coding goal is??? Coding is to produce a specified output. Tony can help here. God fully knew what the accepted errors would produce. If He didn't, He had no capacity to code for future results He wanted.
You have missed the first point of this post. If we accept that he knew his goal was H. sapiens, but the route to H. sapiens was marked by random mutations which he “allowed” because he thought they would be beneficial, you will have to jettison the design theory I have bolded earlier in this post. I look forward to the day in, say, a week’s time when you will blame me for quoting your current, contradictory ideas.