God and evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, April 06, 2017, 12:50 (2786 days ago) @ David Turell

I am combining two threads again, as they deal with the same subject.

DAVID (under “Evolutionary theory cannot be falsified”): I have explained that my comments are at the moment remarks and responses to your questions. Remember they are not set in stone as I've stated. I am ruminating out in public. You then pick up an at-the-moment thought and stick with it in responding to me. I don't settle on one thought or approach. My thoughts remain fluid. I'm trying to understand the history as much as you are. You have not allowed yourself to make choices among the possible final decisions about what to believe.

Final decisions do not lead to fluidity. Two of your thoughts are not fluid at all: 1) humans were your God’s only purpose, and 2) your God designed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder, all of which were related to that purpose. Your fluidity comes into play when you try to find an explanation for the dichotomy and can’t.

DAVID: Again, no dichotomy. Main point, God's goal is to create humans.

No fluidity here.

DAVID: Time to do it is a human concept, not God's. He is timeless. Limitations or not are human thinking, not God's. Is He limited, probably not, but it remains a possibility. Is He all-powerful. More probable. Can I be absolutely positive about either thought? No.

We cannot know your God’s mind, so how with your human thinking can you be absolutely positive that God’s sole purpose was to create humans and he designed everything to relate to that purpose?

DAVID: As for experimentation, all of the intricate examples of complexity in the genome and biologic functions reprised yesterday deny that possibility. They all strongly suggest immediate saltation of immediately active processes, nothing stepwise as would be the case with experimentation.

You seem to have missed the point of my “experimentation” hypothesis, which is the only explanation I can find to remove the dichotomy between your two basic precepts. Nothing to do with the complexity of the genome! Your God starts out wanting to produce beings like himself. He does not have a blueprint. He designs all kinds of beings, but they are not close enough to the image of himself, and so he continues to experiment. In due course he hits on the right formula: a biped mammal with an extra tweak here and there to its brain. All of this fits in with your two rigid tenets. You have rejected it because “any power that can produce a fine-tuned universe can then see to the creation of humans without difficulty.” This leaves you with no explanation for the dichotomy except your dogmatic insistence that God did it your way and you don’t know why. (Of course I "pick up" on your arguments - how else can a discussion proceed?)

DAVID: If you agree not carved in stone, then I can ruminate about possibilities, since that is all they are. Clear explanations do not exist.
dhw: Clear explanations certainly do exist, but that does not mean they are right. I have offered you three clear explanations that do away with the dichotomy between your two hypotheses, but those do seem to be carved in stone (“I won’t leave my beliefs just as you stay on your fence”). ..
DAVID: ….But currently it depends on what 'clear' means. My interpretation of the word is not yours. I see nothing that is 'clearly' correct. Possible explanations, yes, clear, no.

Please read what I wrote. “Clear explanations certainly do exist, but that does not mean they are right.” Right means correct, and I did not say they were clearly correct. Three different explanations can’t all be correct! A clear explanation means one that is easy to understand, so what don’t you understand about the experimentation hypothesis above, or the hypothesis that God wanted a spectacle for himself and so designed a mechanism to produce all sorts of life forms, including humans? You even agree that this explanation fits in with the history of life as we know it. It could hardly be clearer, but of course it’s not “clearly correct”. If it were, we would regard it as a fact, not a hypothesis. However, I would suggest to you that any explanation we can understand has a better chance of being correct than no explanation at all, which is the situation you are faced with when the combination of your two hypotheses does not make sense even to you.

xxxx

dhw: By “very close together”, I thought you meant he [Tony] shared your ideas on God’s purposes, methods and nature – i.e. the subject under discussion.

DAVID: I respect Tony's beliefs, but cannot accept most of his theology for me. We share a belief in a powerful God and His abilities to create life through evolution.

Tony doesn’t even believe in evolution.