Different in degree or kind: more Denton: (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, February 23, 2016, 13:30 (3196 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Your basic assumption is that God's purpose was the creation of humans, and he preprogrammed or directly “guided” evolution in order to fulfil it. Here is an ALTERNATIVE reading of evolution and God's purpose: evolution is a higgledy-piggledy history of RANDOM comings and goings, and what we now see is a variety of living forms which may one day be replaced by different living forms. So that must be what God intended, which is why he deliberately created a mechanism that would provide a RANDOMLY changing array of life forms. And what God intended is what we mean by theistic teleology. -DAVID: Once again you do not see the implications of your theory: 'Random comings and goings' are another way of saying chance mutations, which you reject. Various parts of your comings and goings just don't fit together.-You omitted the sentence I have put in bold, and have missed the whole point of my post. I am explaining how Darwin's theory can be compatible with teleological theism: i.e. how “God's real design precedes and shapes the process” (by creating the mechanism that runs the process) and how the “evolutionary process precedes and shapes the appearance of design” (the mechanism produces the life forms which appear to be designed). God's ALTERNATIVE PURPOSE (teleology) was NOT to produce humans, but to see what random mutations or an autonomous mechanism would bring forth - much as you can say that an automatic lottery machine is designed to produce random results. (NB The results are still meaningful, but they are not preprogrammed.) What you and I accept or reject has nothing to do with it. This ALTERNATIVE PURPOSE explains the random comings and goings of life forms for the last 3.8 billion years. (The random comings and goings would be the result of random changes in the environment - still allowing for my IM - and/or Darwin's random mutations.) In other words, as I wrote, “he did not WANT control of the whole process”. Why? Perhaps because he created life as an experiment or entertainment, just to see what would happen. -DAVID: If God is the creator of the universe and life, it is against all reason that he would invent and start evolution and then give up control, when he obviously controlled everything else.-The attraction of the experiment or entertainment would be NOT to have control. It is more interesting to watch a spectacle if you do NOT know what is going to happen next. (Free will would be another example of God deliberately giving up control.) Perhaps you will object that such a purpose anthropomorphizes God, but I'm afraid you do not have the authority to limit teleology to what you want it to be, as I'm sure you would be told by the Christian ID-er whose arguments you are supporting. Of course you have every right to reject the deliberately random scenario and to stick to your 3.8-billion-year computer programme for the purpose of producing humans, but this only proves that “the claim that Darwinian evolution is not compatible with theistic teleology depends on a purely subjective interpretation of God's purpose.”