Cosmology: Earth in goldylocks zone; dangerous (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, October 29, 2017, 14:13 (2581 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: A theory is “an idea or set of ideas intended to explain something about life or the world” (Longman). If your theory can’t explain the history of the universe and evolution (but mine can), I don’t know what your theory is “consistent” with.

DAVID: My theory is consistent with a belief in God. Yours is descriptive with no cause demonstrated.

dhw: The theories we are discussing are THEISTIC: you can’t explain why your God made the universe so big, or why he designed eight stages of whale, or why with his ability for instantaneous speciation he had to design the weaverbird’s nest and the skull-shrinking shrew and umpteen hominins and hominids before he produced the one species he really wanted to produce. You admit that my theistic hypothesis does explain all this, and your only defence for rejecting it is that God’s logic is different from ours.

Your theistic hypothesis is descriptive of history. That is what I agree to. I look at what He created and recognize that He creates by evolutionary processes. I don't have to explain why the universe is so large. It is your problem. As for the bush of life, it does exist, and balance of nature provides energy for evolution to run its course, an entirely logical answer. God evolves His purposes.

DAVID (under “mussel fiber stretching): Natural biologic 'inventions' teach us how to invent useful products. Is evolution itself, more brilliant than we are? Perhaps it is because God is the inventor.

dhw: Evolution never invented anything. Only organisms can invent. That leaves you with a stark theistic choice: Do you think your God preprogrammed mussel fibre stretching 3.8 billion years ago (as part of his effort to keep life going till he could produce the brain of Homo sapiens), personally intervened to teach mussels how to do it, or provided them with the intelligence to work it out themselves?

Answered above: God is the inventor.