autonomy v. automaticity (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, February 08, 2018, 13:32 (2478 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My entire theory has intertwined threads: God used evolution to produce sapiens. Evolution took time. Time requires continuing energy for life to continue. The bush of life supplies the balance of nature for a continuing energy supply. All connected. Sorry.

Of course evolution takes time! I would assume that it will continue to take time until it finishes and there is no life left. But you keep acknowledging that you don’t know WHY your always-in-control God chose to fulfil his one and only purpose in this roundabout way, and your final “logic” is that God’s logic is different from ours. Sorry, I don’t regard that as a logical explanation, especially when there are alternative hypotheses that ARE logical. (See below)

dhw: So the eggs and new born birds can perch on the branches all day and all night, can they? And most nests are built high up, to provide protection from predators. Your answers make it sound as if it’s a miracle any bird other than the weaver manages to survive!
DAVID: How about the bird species that take over other birds open nests?

So why didn’t your God design closed nests for all the other birds? Do you really believe we wouldn’t be here if your God hadn’t specially designed a knotty nest for weavers? (Re your addendum, I know all about cuckoos, and have even written a children’s play based on their subterfuge!)

dhw: But you are right. If he designed every innovation and lifestyle and natural wonder, he must have singled out every member of every ecosystem for special protection. Except those members that he didn’t specially protect, which = 99%. I can’t help wondering why he bothered.
DAVID: 99% loss is part of God's pattern of advancing from less complex to more complex to the ultimate complexity of the sapiens brain.

As if an always-in-control God couldn’t find a more straightforward way of producing the one thing he wanted to produce. Or could it be that your God didn’t actually know how to produce it and so had to keep experimenting? Or didn’t think of producing it until later on? Or actually wanted to produce an ever-changing bush of life, including humans? Can you fault the logic of these theistic explanations for the higgledy-piggledy bush?

dhw: I would have thought [Adler] would have mentioned your hypothesis if he had believed in it.
DAVID: I've read only two books. One quoted in Science vs. Religion which you've seen which guides my reluctance to define God as you keep trying to do.

You show little reluctance to define your God as a universal consciousness who created life with the sole purpose of producing the brain of Homo sapiens so that his works could be studied, he could have a relationship with us, and could watch us with interest.

DAVID: The other book […] makes the/my point that we are not like any other living organism and only God could have done this, that is our immaterial mind…

In many respects we are just like lots of other living organisms, and I don’t see how a dualist can claim that other organisms don’t have immaterial minds, but of course I agree that our degree of immaterial consciousness is vastly greater than theirs. Yes, we are special. But I’m pleased to hear that you don’t actually know if Adler believed that God created the weaverbird’s nest plus all other innovations etc. in order to keep life going just for us.

dhw (under “chimps”): I suggest that your reluctance to dig deeper refers to this hypothesis, because you can’t find any logic in its workings other than “he preferred to do it this way”. I have dug deeper and have proposed a different hypothesis whose workings are completely logical.
DAVID: All of which tries to understand God from a humanizing standpoint. I'll stick with Adler as recognizing that impossibility.

Questioning the logic of your hypothesis does not mean humanizing. Suggesting that your God created the initial mechanism and left organisms to work out their own solutions, is not humanizing. The above interpretations of the “gap” are no more humanizing than the proposal that he is in control, created life so that humans would study his works, and “preferred to do it this way”.