Evolution, survival and adaptation (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, October 02, 2017, 15:32 (2607 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: […] Until you can explain how your God’s personal design or preprogramming of the weaverbird’s nest “fits together” with the production of the human brain, there can be no “fitting together” of your prime purpose and the history of evolution.

DAVID: My not delving into your thought processes of God's purposes is I find many of your questions unanswerable as I have stated. We can only understand God through what He has produced. His motives, from our standpoint are only educated guesses. You have yours, influenced from your non-belief, I have mine. Mine look consistent to me. Yours make me think, but if I have no answer to your questions, it is generally because I don't see how to reach one I can believe. As for watching, since God created form and function, I'm sure He watches to see how His creations are working out their lives at a functional level. Does He judge human choices and moral behavior? Doubtful. As for fitting in whales, weaverbirds, etc., I'll stick with ecosystems for food supply.

dhw: As always, I appreciate your honesty in admitting that your hypothesis raises questions you cannot answer. That is why I keep asking you to consider other hypotheses. If God exists, we can indeed only try to understand him through what he has produced, and what he has produced does not fit in with your hypothesis. I shan’t repeat the long list of anomalies, since you acknowledge them as questions you can’t answer. My own theistic hypothesis is not “influenced by my non-belief” (when I put on my theist’s hat, I don’t suddenly become an atheist!) – it is influenced by my attempt to find a coherent explanation for evolution’s history. I agree that humans are especially self-aware and intelligent, and so they may have been an afterthought, or the result of experimentation or a dabble, but that does not make them the “prime” purpose, which needs to explain the weaverbird’s nest as well as the human brain. The motive I suggest is the spectacle (which even you think he must be watching), and the method is a free-for-all, so we needn’t wonder why he specially created the whale and the weaverbird's nest and the frog's poison. The simple answer is that he didn’t. He only created the means whereby they (their intelligent cell communities) did their own creating. Just a hypothesis, but which of your “unanswerable” questions does it fail to answer?'

Don't you realize your paragraph is supposition piled on supposition to explain in your mind what is miraculous material. Why is there any life? Why did the human brain appear? If you look at it from a sense of wonder and appreciation purpose can appear. If you then say to yourself it all requires planning, that planning must come from a miraculous mind. It is all very logical to me. I see the coherence you can't find.