Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, February 18, 2017, 14:10 (2835 days ago) @ David Turell

I am linking four posts in order to avoid repetition.

dhw: …And thank you for your honesty in telling us that you do try to approach him personally. I would suggest that this means it is you who may prefer a more personal God. I can’t believe you would waste your time approaching a god you thought had nothing in common with you.
DAVID: I think perhaps you now understand my personal conflict. I try not to approach God as in any way human, while trying to relate to Him. You have not said you 'prefer' a more personal god, but that is what your humanizing implies to me, when trying to understand your theistic thinking.

Your personal conflict seems to me symptomatic of all the contradictions I keep pointing out. What you call my humanizing is simply an attempt to fit the image to the evidence we have. If your God exists, and if he is watching us but remains hidden, as you claim, then maybe he created life in order to watch the ever-changing spectacle of pain and pleasure. You could scarcely imagine a less personal God. Your initial vehement resistance (now modified) to such a concept, and your authoritative statement that your God does not contain a smidgen of evil, can only have sprung from your own desire for the all-good, personal God you find yourself approaching. (NB I am not promulgating any particular view myself. I am just offering an alternative to your own bundle of contradictions.)

dhw: Life requires energy. The balance of nature changes according to how much energy is available to each species. You have agreed that all it means is life goes on. Nothing to do with your God designing millions of life forms and styles and wonders in order to produce humans.
DAVID: You keep missing the point, or I'm not clear. In the tree of life there are thousands, if not millions of micro-econiches, with balance and energy supply. Millions of life forms are necessary.

You keep using the word “necessary”, and I ask: necessary for what? The millions of micro-econiches are precisely my point. I do not see how they can be necessary for the production of humans, and you don’t either. Nor are they “necessary” for life to continue, because bacteria have done very nicely, thank you, and as you have agreed (under “wolves and bears”): "There would still be a “balance of nature” if humans disappeared."

DAVID: Looks like we really have some agreement. My 'anthropocentric interpretation' is based on the current end point of evolution, humans. If humans are gone, the Earth will return to previous states.

Exactly. And then you will have a different balance of nature. The balance of nature is whatever happens to be alive at any one particular time. Again, nothing to do with the whole of evolution being geared to the production of humans. And even you admit that the attempt to link every life form, lifestyle and natural wonder with humans, despite your God’s ability to dabble, does not make sense.

DAVID: Guess what? It doesn't make sense to me either, but He did not directly create humans.

Obviously he didn’t. And that’s why your hypothesis makes no sense to you or to me.

DAVID: He used an evolutionary process of living organisms, after using an evolutionary process to create the universe and a very special Earth. Go with the evidence that this was His plan from the beginning. Why not?

WHAT was his plan? If he produced all these millions of non-human organisms, 99% of which disappeared, maybe his plan was NOT just to produce humans, but to produce the ever-changing spectacle of different life forms that constitutes life’s history (though he could still have dabbled humans). Go with the evidence!

DAVID (under “carnivores”): : The insect catchers have a complex mechanism. I doubt it could develop stepwise, I think God helped.
dhw: God “helped” is a little odd. Presumably it means these plants and frogs had a great idea but couldn’t quite pull it off, so God stepped in to show them, because without their special methods of catching prey, there would be no balance of nature to enable life to go on so that he could eventually dabble with the brains of pre-humans.
DAVID: Remember each of these organisms are in their own micro-econiches of balance of nature. It is not one huge balance.

Of course they are in their niche. And if they die out, it’s because the niche is not balanced in their favour. How does that prove that God designed them in order to balance nature in order for life to go on in order for him to produce humans?

DAVID: I don't think the organisms could pull this off in several steps.

I never said they could.

DAVID: They look like they need to be developed all at once, as a saltation. God helping would not be 'odd'.

It’s the implication that is odd. Either they could or they couldn’t do it themselves. God helping them suggests they were trying autonomously and couldn’t do it, so God stepped in – because he needed these prey-catching methods to balance nature in order for life to go on etc. Your hypothesis doesn’t make sense to you, and yet you still cling to it.