Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 27, 2016, 13:02 (2888 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I've not abandoned the link at all. It is you who is not willing to make the link from you agnostic position. You can't see purpose and I can. At least you have finally recognize balance for what it is, necessary food supply, supported by eco-niches requiring top predators. that makes the bush of life.
dhw: Nothing to do with my agnostic position, and nothing to do with not seeing purpose. The balance of nature, i.e. the supply of food for whatever creatures happen to exist at any time, does not require your God’s special design of whales, the monarch butterfly’s migratory lifestyle, or the natural wonder of the weaverbird’s nest.
DAVID: You are looking at the balance of nature from the outside. Just as 'logic' removed wolves from Yellowstone and upset the balance of nature, returning them, after research showed they were needed, rebalanced it illustrates the futility of your position.

You are once again talking as if there were a right balance and a wrong balance, even though at other times you have agreed that so long as there is ANY form of life, that = balance of nature. This has always varied throughout life’s history, and it has always been in favour of some and against others.

DAVID: Research may well show why whales, monarch migration, and weaverbird nests are necessary. […]

Necessary for what? It is my sincere belief that if the weaverbird - whose nest you think was specially designed by your God to balance nature - died out or suddenly designed a very simple nest for itself, life would still go on. And bearing in mind your anthropocentric interpretation of your God’s purpose in “guiding” evolution, I sincerely believe humans would also survive without the weaverbird’s nest. Don't you?

DAVID: That God is not a logical designer is atheistic thinking, nothing more…

Please explain why the hypothesis of a possible God who may have designed an autonomous, inventive mechanism to produce a spectacle of diverse living organisms, extant and extinct, is (a) illogical, and (b) atheistic.

dhw: Life would have gone on just the same if your God had given them the means of designing their own evolution, lifestyle and home. This would explain the higgledy-piggledy bush of life, and it would remove the great gulf in your hypothesis between his desire to produce humans and his special design of organisms that have nothing to do with the production of humans.
DAVID: Again you are making an atheistic assumption. I've admitted they may have an inventive mechanism, but you won't let me have my God watch it for tight control.

Once again, as an interpretation of a possible God’s possible mode of running evolution, my hypothesis is in no way atheistic. Your inventive mechanism is always “guided”. What does “watch it for tight control” mean? In my theistic mode, I have made allowance for the occasional dabble, but your “tight control” removes the all-important autonomy, thereby excluding the “freewheeling” which you have admitted and then omitted, since it is the exact opposite of tight control.