autonomy v. automaticity (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, February 10, 2018, 13:07 (2476 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: How do you know what he wanted? That is YOUR human interpretation, as is the whole of your hypothesis and your refusal to consider other hypothesis on the grounds that God’s logic is different from ours. Again, how do you know?

DAVID: Look at what He produced. That is what He wanted. No reasons offered as to why He did it can be offered.

I have looked at what he produced: an ever changing higgledy-piggledy bush. That suggests to me that he wanted an ever-changing higgledy-piggledy bush. We can offer as many reasons as we like as to why he did it. You’ve offered the reason that he specially designed the weaverbird’s nest and a few million other wonders to provide energy to keep life going until he could produce the sapiens brain. I’ve offered the reason that (if he exists) he set the wheels of evolution in free motion because he wanted an ever-changing higgledy-piggledy bush (but could intervene if he felt like it).

dhw: If God exists, we don’t know to what extent we reflect the characteristics of our maker, and it is an insult to human intelligence to dismiss logical explanations of his motives and methods, and to embrace illogical ones, solely on the grounds that he MIGHT not think like us.

DAVID: See above. I'm convinced He does not think as we do. He is a person like no other person, per Adler.

The fact that you are convinced that your illogical explanation of evolution is correct because your God does not think like humans does not mean that your illogical explanation is correct or that your God does not think like humans. Would you accept an atheist's dismissal of your logical case for design on the grounds that nature doesn't follow your human logic?

DAVID: You clearly can't see that evolution took lots of time. Balance of nature provides the energy allowing life to evolve more complex life. Pristine clear.

I am as aware as you are that the current theory is that life has been going on for about 3.8 billion years. Yes, that’s lots of time. And life needs energy. And the balance of nature changes according to which organisms can get enough energy to keep going. And multicellularity has led to increasing complexity. None of this means that your God took thousands of millions of years to personally design every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct, when all he wanted was the brain of Homo sapiens. You admit that it’s not logical, and so you convince yourself that your God’s logic must be different from ours.