Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, February 25, 2017, 11:21 (2828 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I think your disbelief creates a skewed thought pattern as it relates to God and his possible intentions. Of course you have every right to speculate.

Agnosticism is not disbelief (= God does not exist) but non-belief (= I can’t make up my mind whether God exists or not). There is a huge difference. I have offered a theistic interpretation of evolution (that your God designed a mechanism that could and did produce an ever-changing spectacle, though he may have dabbled occasionally, perhaps to produce humans), which you admit fits in perfectly with evolutionary history. And you even believe he watches the ever changing spectacle with interest. If you can’t understand why he chose personally to design millions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders in order to keep life going until he could dabble with pre-human brains, or pre-humans could switch on their brain-enlargement programme, then maybe it is your own thought pattern that is “skewed”.

DAVID: I keep defending balance of nature to supply food. I've simply said God guides evolution. He may have made living organisms very inventive in the forms they evolve or He may have guided them Himself. We've agreed on these possibilities when you play theist.

Then let me try once more to pin you down: do you or do you not think it is possible that frogs and carnivorous plants designed their own methods of catching prey, or do you still insist that only your God could have preprogrammed or dabbled them?

DAVID: You cannot come to the position that He did it, so you rationally try to explain God without recognizing that He did what He did for his own reasons.
dhw: I have no doubt that if he exists, he did what he did for his own reasons. I merely point out to you that the reason you impose on him doesn’t make sense even to you, so maybe he had a different motive.
DAVID: But what you have written makes perfect sense to me. He wanted humans, and He conducted the evolution of the bush of life to get there.

As above. You do not understand why he “conducted the evolution of the bush of life” (= designed millions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders) if all he wanted was humans, and yet it makes perfect sense to you!

DAVID: Isn't a designer required if chance won't work?

Yes. But that does not mean the designer designed every life form in order to get to humans.