Evolution: whale teeth and baleens; another article (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 08, 2018, 21:57 (1959 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Of course a Darwin-based article will present your line of reasoning, which always avoids the need for design engineering.

dhw: Sorry, but “Darwin-based” is no defence of hypothesis 1). My line of reasoning never avoids the need for “design engineering”. Its theistic version simply offers the possibility that your God gave cells/cell communities the ability to do their own designing – not in anticipation of changing conditions but in response to them.

DAVID: Why you constantly think God would give up control of one of His projects puzzles me. We can make up anything about God we want, but our only clues about God's thoughts are the results of His works, and then working backwards in our reasoning. I certainly don't reason like you do.

dhw; You tell me I always avoid the need for design engineering, I explain that I never ignore it, and so you switch back to the question of control, which has already been dealt with umpteen times! Ah well, round we go. Yes indeed, we work backwards from the results, which are millions and millions of life forms, econiches etc. etc. extant and extinct. You reason that your God’s motive for this diversity was to provide food to keep life going. And you then reason that his sole purpose for doing so was to produce H. sapiens, so that we would think about him and he could have a relationship with us, although he is always in full control and you simply don’t know why he chose this roundabout method of achieving his sole purpose. Why would he want to give up control? Perhaps because – as you have often said – he is hidden but watches us with interest, and it is more interesting to watch the unpredictable than to watch everything do precisely what you have prearranged for it to do. (But he can still dabble if he wants to.) This reading of God’s mind is an alternative to your own, as described above, and – to anticipate the next leap backwards – is no more “humanizing” than your own.

He arranged for us to have free will. That gives Him plenty to watch if He wants to watch. I don't know if He wants to watch. Why should I know why He chose evolution as His methodology?
I can only take reasons from what I see. You want to know more than we can know.