God and Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, February 08, 2019, 10:24 (2113 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I don't try to understand, which is your misinterpretation. It is your created puzzle that I don't have. I admit to all the same possibilities as you do, as any one possibility may be the right one.

dhw: Thank you. At last!

DAVID: Your problem is evolution really happened and I believe God decided to do it that way for whatever possibility we can imagine. That way there is nothing to understand.

dhw: I have no problem accepting that evolution really happened, and if God exists I have no problem accepting that he would have masterminded the whole evolutionary process. Since you now agree that all my hypotheses may be correct, we can end the discussion. My “problem” all along has been your fixed belief that only ONE possibility is correct – namely, that your God’s singular purpose was to specially design humans, but he chose to spend 3.5+ billion years specially designing billions of other life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders, and did so for the sole purpose of getting them to eat each other until he could specially design humans.

DAVID: I'm still fixed but I accept your possibilities.

An historic moment! Thank you.

dhw: I’m sorry that having expressed your certainty that your God watches everything with the same enjoyment (your own word) as a painter enjoying his own work, you have dropped the subject of this being a possible purpose, and of general freedom - not just human freedom - enhancing the interest. May I take this as an acceptance (I don’t ask for belief) of the feasibility of my alternative to your own hypothesis [bolded above]?

DAVID: You have sort of twisted my viewpoint. If the designer's purpose is through a stepwise evolutionary process from simple to complex, there are secondary issues that must occur to provide the continuity of effort until the goal is reached. Thus a group to be eaten and survival of each step is baked into the process. Totally logical.

dhw: Once more you gloss over the whole issue of your God’s “enjoyment” of all his creations as a possible motive for creating them in the first place (with freedom of invention adding to the interest), and you scuttle back to the fixed belief which I have bolded above and which you find “totally logical”, even though you have repeatedly stated that you can’t explain it. I prefer your more open-minded approach in acknowledging that ALL the different bolded theistic hypotheses at the head of this post are possible, together with the hypothesis that the whole higgledy-piggledy bush was for his own “enjoyment” (your word).

DAVID: We can end on this note. We view God differently.

Just to clarify, we have been discussing theistic interpretations of evolution. You have a fixed view of your God’s (singular) purpose and of the (to me illogical and incredible) way in which he implemented that purpose, as bolded above, and also incorporating the 3.8-billion-year old “library” of info and instructions. I have offered alternative views of the purpose, together with explanations concerning how he might have used the method of evolution in order to fulfil those alternative purposes. You have accepted that all of these are possible.

It would seem that we have now reached agreement on these issues, as well as on that of survival as an “immediate driving force” for evolution, and so I shall refer back to this post if any of these issues arise again. Pax!