God and evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, March 19, 2017, 11:22 (2804 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You don’t know whether he was or wasn’t capable of doing what he wanted to do. If he wasn’t capable, he had to “wait” – I call that “buying time” as you think he had to find ways to keep life going until humans appeared…
DAVID: You keep trying to make sense of the unknowable.

All our discussions are “trying to make sense of the unknowable”. I simply try to explain the implications of your own attempts. You stated explicitly that God did not “buy time”. If his purpose was to create humans and he was incapable of producing them straight away (one of your two hypotheses), he had to “buy time”. Yes or no?

DAVID: If He has been in full control, humans came whenever He wanted them. If He is limited then He had to wait, either or. Either way the balance of nature fed everyone. (dhw's bold)
dhw: Once more, the balance of nature never fed anyone. It is sources of energy that do the feeding, and they didn’t feed everyone, because 99% of everyone went extinct, which is why the balance of nature kept changing.
DAVID: 99% had to go if evolution was to continue. Don't you see that?

I was responding to your inaccurate statement that “the balance of nature fed everyone”. No it didn’t. That is why the balance kept changing. Whether 99% “had to go” is another matter.

dhw:The process of life needs energy all the way, regardless of what organism we are talking about. You have agreed that “balance of nature” offers no support to your hypothesis that humans are the purpose of evolution, and we both agree, as above, that life went on and humans “came”, so what are we arguing about?
DAVID: No argument with this rational statement.

Then we can close the “balance of nature” debate in respect of evolutionary history, though your articles on how humans are currently changing the balance of nature, such as the one you have posted today on “anthropocene future effects”, are important (and mightily depressing).

dhw: ...when you say you don't know whether your God is in full control or not, you contradict yourself by rejecting any hypothesis that takes control away from him.
DAVID: Because you persist in removing too much control in your theories.

Your exact objection to my alternatives was: “Because some of your proposals take control from God.” Now, all of a sudden, it is “too much control”. I shan’t ask you to define how much loss of control is needed before we can call it loss of control. If you can’t see the contradiction, let’s move on.

DAVID: All we know is He uses evolutionary processes for everything He develops.
dhw: Precisely. We both believe that evolution happened, and if God exists, he used evolutionary processes. But see the thread on “ruminations” for various alternatives to your hypothesis that he preprogrammed or dabbled the fly’s compound eye in order to keep life going until humans came.
DAVID: Backsliding again. We both understand life's diversity feeds evolution.

What backsliding? Evolution is the process by which life has diversified. How on Earth does that mean your God designed the fly’s compound eye in order to keep life going until humans arrived?