Darwin & Wallace (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, October 04, 2015, 12:39 (3336 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I really have no way of knowing what sort of guidance, nor do I care. Since there are huge gaps in the fossil record and I believe in theistic evolution, God may well have produced each jump in speciation.-God producing each jump in speciation = creationism, as opposed to evolution. That's a big jump in the evolution of Turellian thinking, though it is neatly balanced by your response on 1 October to my scepticism: “...perhaps the drive did not need the direct intervention of God's dabbling to produce the oddities. The thought gives me a different answer about the dabbling issue. Thank you for the stimulation.” Well, fortunately, you care enough to have written two brilliant books on the subject, and to have kept this website buzzing for nearly eight years, so don't switch off now!
 
DAVID: Your analytical brain won't let loose. We humans are here against all odds. Life is a wildly convoluted bush of lifestyles. So? We ARE HERE. That fact is not all explained by Darwin. -Of course my analytical brain won't let loose. I opened this website because I am looking for explanations The brontosaurus was also here against all odds, and the duck-billed platypus is here now against all odds, and I find that the explanations offered by atheistic Darwinism as epitomised by Richard Dawkins, and theistic evolutionary anthropocentrism as epitomised by David Turell, are full of huge gaps which I try to point out. I'm afraid your “So?” does not fill the gaps.-DAVID: I see purpose. You see confusion. And when you approach God and ignore purpose, your 'theistic brain' gets all muddled, in my view. That is your problem when you try to be theistic. We do not know if God's logic is 'our' logic. Try looking for purpose.-The only purpose you have offered me so far is the production of humans. But with my hypothetical theistic hat on, I have several times suggested a hypothetical purpose that fits in with the higgledy-piggledy history of life on earth, but then I am told not to try and read God's mind! Once more: God, in his infinite boredom, created an autonomous, inventive mechanism for life, reproduction and evolution, to provide himself with some entertainment. Unpredictability is essential to entertainment - we'd soon walk out of the show if we knew exactly what was coming. So no plan, he just let it all happen. He could intervene if he felt like it, though, to beef things up a bit. Humans would certainly provide more variety than, say, brontosauruses munching the grass for 160 million years. He may have walked out already, or he may still be watching...-How does this compare to God personally designing the brontosaurus, the duck-billed platypus, the weaverbird's nest and the monarch's lifestyle in order to produce or feed humans, and then hiding himself behind a curtain of quantum uncertainty? Perhaps it might help if you told us what you think was God's purpose in producing humans.