Divine purposes and methods (Evolution)

by David Turell @, Sunday, December 30, 2018, 15:34 (1906 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: As we have agreed so many times before, and as you repeat below, there is no visible reason why evolution should have proceeded beyond bacteria. The fact that humans are more self-aware, intelligent and powerful than any other species does not mean that your God specially designed millions of other species extant and extinct merely in order to provide food so that life could go on for 3.5+ billion years until he could produce us.

I'm simply accepting that what evolution's history shows us is God's work, and all you are doing is rejecting that approach as an agnostic. Therefore, it is simple for me to believe God ran the process of evolution and ended up with our appearance. I believe. You don't.


dhw: And this is where your logic breaks down, as you readily admit, because you cannot explain why, if humans were his sole purpose and he was in full control and could choose any method he wished, he chose to spend 3.5+ thousand million years specially designing millions of life forms, econiches, lifestyles and natural wonders before he specially designed us.

I accept what I see as God's work. You are the one with the logic problem about His choices. Evolution is obviously a driven process, and it is easy to see God as the driver.


DAVID: You keep fussing about the time evolution took. Accept that it did.

dhw: Of course evolution has taken time, and will continue to take time until life dies out! That doesn’t mean your God gave himself the commandment: “Thou shalt take 3.5+ billion years and specially design and kill off millions of life forms etc. before specially designing the one thing thou wantest to design.”

You are questioning God's decisions who remains hidden. So I must conclude you have a direct conduit into his intentions and decisions. For you God is not logical. You are an agnostic and have every right to judge His logic as you see it.


dhw: Precisely. Yet again: If your God could choose any method he liked to fulfil his one and only purpose, why did he specially design whale fins and baleens, cuttlefish camouflage, monarch migration, 50,000 spider webs, all the complexities of all the mammals and reptiles and birds and fish extant and extinct for 3.5+ billion years? You can’t explain it, so maybe one or other or all of your hypotheses (God in total control, H. sapiens as sole purpose, special design of all life forms etc.) are wrong.

I' don't explain. I Interpret. If God used time consuming evolution as His production process all the diversity provides food for survive of life. Totally logical.


DAVID: Be sure to look at pointy eggs and whales. What we are debating about is all in the information hidden in the code of the genome's black box . We know what it runs but not how, and it is obvious to me it contains all the intelligent responses to stimuli needed. […] You do not run your body as it survives. You use your body for your chosen activities, thanks to the autonomic system it has.

dhw: I like the analogy. We don’t know how it runs, but there is a 50/50 chance that micro-organisms use their autonomous intelligence as I do (though to nothing like the same degree) to process information, communicate it to others, take decisions etc. and perform their chosen activities through the autonomic parts of their bodies.

Bacterial intelligence is the intelligent information and instructions in their DNA. I have God as a logical source for it. And as a result I believe that bacteria are totally autonomic.


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