Innovation, Speciation: strange DNA finding (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 08, 2018, 22:06 (2175 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: How can I know why God chose evolution instead of direct creation? That is the evidence presented. I've offered the very logical reason that life has to eat and the diversity supplies the energy for evolutionary time to pass. Instead you are totally illogical about a gap I don't see. What gap?

dhw: Once more: you insist that he personally designed 50,000 spider webs, baleens, the weaverbird’s nest, plus 3+ billion years’ worth of innovations, econiches, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct, so that everything could eat everything else to keep life going while time passed. But his sole purpose was to produce us so that we would think about him and have a relationship with him. With the full control you attribute to him, you say he could have achieved his purpose directly, and so you don’t know why he chose to create us in this manner. The bit that you don’t know is the gap. And I have suggested several ways in which you can do away with it, but you continue to ignore them (see below).

I don't believe my God would do it your way.

DAVID: Once again you want me to read God's mind, while no one can, even though you keep trying.

It is your reading of your God’s mind that I keep challenging, but (a) you don’t seem to realize that when you specify your God’s purpose you are trying to read his mind, and (b) you persist in refusing to recognize that your reading of his mind makes no sense in relation to the method you propose. You admit that you can’t link the two together but you still won’t admit that this represents a gap in your reasoning!

Based on what we know, my reasoning make perfect sense to me. I'm sorry it makes no sense to you, but the unusual result of a human with consciousness suggests purpose. Davies has made the same point in his writings, although he doesn't goes as far as to accept God.

DAVID: Once again, God can create humans by any method He wishes. He obviously chose an evolutionary process.

dhw: You and I agree that evolution took place. But if you can’t see any way in which the method fits the purpose, there might just possibly be a fault in your interpretation of one or both. Hence the above proposals, which you continue to ignore. May I presume you can’t find any logical flaw in them?

God is allowed to pick His method. You question it, I don't. That is our difference.

DAVID: Accept God's obvious method and there is no gap, except in your thinking which insists upon entering His mind for an exact purpose. […]

dhw: You are not asking me to accept your God’s method. You are asking me to accept your interpretation of evolution as a means of fulfilling your interpretation of your God’s intentions, even though you yourself can’t find any way to link the method and the exact, anthropocentric purpose which YOU impose on him.

Repeat: I simply accept what God does. You don't. He evolved us, End of story.