God and evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, March 16, 2017, 12:17 (2807 days ago)

Once again, the threads are overlapping, and so I will pick out the salient points:

DAVID: It is simple to recognize God might have wanted to evolve the big brain over time as His choice of development. You are suggesting a limited God, which possibility I originally expressed, but that He wanted this other approach to development is just as probable.

It was you who suggested a limited God because you could not make any sense of the scenario in which an all-powerful God would have to design millions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders before he personally or his 3.8-billion-year programme was able to enlarge the human brain. Here is the relevant quote taken from my post under “Evolution took a long time” (27 February at 12.23). I summarized the above hypothesis and added: “and his ability to dabble makes even you wonder why he couldn’t have produced us more directly. It just doesn’t make sense.” I then quoted your reply: “Guess what? It doesn’t make sense to me either”, and you went on to repeat the obvious: “but he did not directly create humans. He used an evolutionary process…” etc. (The problem of course is why!) Later you came up with the explanation that maybe God HAD to do it that way because he was limited. From then on, he has either been limited or not limited, but that does not alter the fact that your theory does not make sense to you unless he is limited. The all-powerful approach fails to answer the question of why he didn’t do the one thing he wanted to do. Your only answer, repeated over and over again, is that he used evolution, the latest example coming under “dark matter”:
DAVID’S comment: This is more evidence that the universe evolved and God uses an evolutionary method to achieve His goals.
If you believe in evolution and you believe in God, then of course you believe that God used an evolutionary method. But that does not mean he preprogrammed or dabbled the weaverbird’s nest, the frog’s tongue or the fly’s compound eye in order to keep life going until he could produce humans. And in relation to solar systems, we now have him either not in control and having to wait until the right system comes along, or being in full control and creating lots of galaxies with lots of life forms (all apparently culminating in humans!).

DAVID: As I've explained, He has the right to chose any method of getting to creating humans in any way He chooses. He may be in total control yet look limited.

Yes of course he has the right if he is the creator of everything. We are discussing the logic and likelihood of him using the particular methods you ascribe to him. It is you who keep telling us that he may or may not be in total control. I don’t know how he can “look” anything. Have you seen him?

I offered various (unproven) alternatives to your (unproven) hypotheses, and asked you (1) where these alternative hypotheses (as unproven as your own) fail to match evolutionary history, and (2) why they are not just as convincing as yours.

DAVID: Because some of your proposals take control from God, I find those unacceptable granted that He may have some limits. Those He probably can overcome given time to make corrections.

How can you object to the possibility of God not being in control when you keep telling us you don’t know whether he is in full control or not? However, do tell us what mistakes he might have made that needed correcting.

DAVID: In my reasoning I see overwhelming evidence that humans were the endpoint of evolution. I have previously listed all of those.

I have included that possibility among my alternatives. However, you have taken to using “endpoint” rather than “purpose”. Not necessarily the same. I’ll be delighted if this signals a departure from your dogmatic insistence that God set out from the very beginning to produce humans and designed everything else for that purpose.

DAVID: Will you ever accept the point that the balance supplies the necessary energy for life to continue, and is required?
dhw: It is nature that supplies the energy, and the balance at any particular time is formed by whichever organisms are best able to exploit the energy provided [etc.].
DAVID: Perversely the same mis-interpretation. Only a proper balance of nature can supply the energy needed for life to continue throughout evolution. I have shown you improper balances and what happens.

As I have pointed out several times now, the examples you give concern human interference which changes the balance of nature into something we consider to be improper. This does not mean that life will not continue, with or without humans. Throughout the history of evolution prior to humans, the balance constantly changed as conditions changed, but life continued in accordance with which species were best able to use the conditions, as remains the case today, except that there were no humanly judged “proper” or “improper” balances. The ever changing balance of nature gives no support to your God-designed-it-all-for-the-sake-of-humans hypothesis. It simply forces you into contradictory arguments plus repetition of the obvious: that if God exists and evolution happened, then God used evolution.
r