Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, February 24, 2017, 13:03 (2616 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You are constantly rethinking your positions, which is not a bad thing to do. > Of course we don’t know if God cares or not, and we hardly need Adler to tell us that.
DAVID: Not so much re-thinking, as in the sense of revising, but more clearly restating my underlying thoughts.

We needn’t worry about whether it’s revising or restating, so long as our discussions are useful.

dhw: I have never tried to hide my own ambivalent feelings about the existence and nature of God. Our discussions have always centred on the inconsistencies and contradictions in your own concepts. (I don’t mean that unkindly. I don’t think it’s possible to hold firm beliefs in this context without blinding oneself to the obvious objections – hence the ultimate recourse to faith.)
DAVID: Accepted. You simply cannot give a firm description of a personal theology out of total disbelief.

Sorry, but I don’t understand this sentence. I have neither belief nor disbelief, but am as entitled as anyone else to speculate on God’s nature (if he exists) as reflected in his creations.

DAVID: Therefore you cannot answer the question as to which is correct, chance or design.

What is this “therefore”? Nobody can say which is correct but, as an agnostic, by definition I cannot opt for either answer.

dhw: The fact that humans arrived, that the duckbilled platypus arrived, and that 99% of species arrived and departed is history. God’s intentions (if he exists) are speculation.
DAVID: I start with another first conclusion. Humans are here against all odds.
dhw: So is every other form of life. That is what we are trying to explain.
DAVID: Once life appears against all odds, humans are the most difficult to explain by chance.

“Most difficult” does not explain why your God had to design frogs’ tongues and carnivorous plants before pre-humans could switch on their brain-enlargement programme or be dabbled with. THAT is the subject of dispute here.

dhw: I know you love your new coinage “God-lite”, but God creating a mechanism that would provide an ever changing spectacle of life forms (while allowing him to dabble) is not “God-lite”. It merely offers an alternative to your own avowedly non-sensical interpretation of your God’s evolutionary intentions and methods, and I’m afraid my being stuck in limbo does not endow your scenario with the sense that is so patently missing.
DAVID: You are simple offering God in a slightly different form. Only chance or design are possible.
dhw: I am pointing out that there is a theistic explanation of the evolutionary process that dispenses with all the factors that make no sense even to you.
DAVID: It is not that God's activities make no 'sense' to me, it is that I don't understand why He chose the methods He did. I'm sure He had His reasons. Only in that way it makes no sense. That doesn't stop me from thinking God is required by the evidence.

Our disagreement here is not over the evidence for design. If you can’t understand why he chose those methods, those methods make no sense to you. On the premise that if God exists, he would have known what he was doing, I have suggested an alternative interpretation of his methods that DOES make sense: namely, that he designed a mechanism that could and did produce an ever-changing spectacle (though he may have dabbled occasionally, perhaps to produce humans).) Once again, this hypothesis has nothing to do with WHETHER God exists – it is only concerned with his methods and his intentions.