Unanswered questions (General)

by dhw, Sunday, June 30, 2019, 09:57 (1755 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] do please tell us if any scientists, philosophers or theologians support the above theory.

DAVID: But of course they agree with me, because I have accepted their point that God designed all of evolution. They just don't use the word God, but it is always implied.

Please tell us which of them agrees with you that your God designed every single life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder, and that he did so for the sole purpose of getting all life forms to eat or not eat one another until he specially designed the only thing he wanted to design, H. sapiens.

DAVID: You are right. There is no proof that God did anything. There is a concept called 'faith'.

dhw: End of discussion. You have faith that your illogical interpretation of your God’s mind is correct. So you needn’t claim that history supports you, or that Adler and ID folk support you. They don't. And I eagerly wait to hear if anybody supports you!

DAVID: Why can't you allow me to integrate the reasonable principals of experts (ID and Adler) to reach a conclusion that God exists and that the specialness of humans proves the point that God exists?

It is the complexity of all life forms, including humans, that ID-ers use to support the case for design, and you have told us that Adler does NOT cover the theory I have summarized in my first comment. I accept the logic of the design theory as evidence of your God's existence. Our disagreement is over your fixed interpretation of your God’s purpose and method.

dhw: Why can’t you accept that if God exists, he chose to evolve (though this does not mean specially design) ALL forms of life etc., and even you have “no idea” why he would do so if his only purpose was us? That is your faith.

DAVID: You have constantly totally misused my statement about: 'no idea' . What I don't know is why He chose to evolve rather than direct creation. We've had that discussion and perhaps He has limits or that He chose to evolve everything. Either/or.

But you absolutely refuse to accept the possibility that he has limits. Your God is always in total charge (as you repeat below, now bolded). If you accepted limits, you would accept the logic of experimentation, or humans as a late afterthought.

DAVID: Econiches fill the bush of life for a necessary reason.

dhw: Econiches are balanced until they become unbalanced, and then you have a new econiche. Nothing whatsoever to do with the theory that organisms eat or do not eat one another until your God can specially design the only thing he wants to design (us).

DAVID: You are quite correct! Econiches are so necessary they have the ability to re-adapt!

So do please stop pretending that econiches in some way support your belief that your God specially designed them all so that organisms could eat or not eat one another until your God designed the only thing he wanted to design.

DAVID: He designed humans from precursor primates. He got to that stage from previous stages of evolution.

dhw: Since we both believe in common descent, we can agree that previous stages of evolution led to primates, and primates led to humans. That still doesn’t explain why a fully-in-control God “had to” specially design whale flippers, cuttlefish camouflage, monarch migration, weaverbirds’ nests, salmon migratory reproduction, and slug/algae/bacteria triple symbiosis etc. in order to specially design us.

DAVID: Because I view Him as in charge of conducting and designing all of evolution. It is God who speciates, my solution to understanding that problem. Speciation requires design!

But the one and only purpose of specially designing H. sapiens does not require the design of all the above, so why did he “have to” design them?

dhw (under “Neanderthal research”): Your authoritative statement above (he knows exactly what he wants) fits in perfectly with the hypothesis that what he wanted was an autonomous mechanism to produce the higgledy-piggledy bush of comings and goings […]

DAVID: Same old retreat to your humanized view of God. In your view God allows an 'unpredictable' course of evolution. My God is supremely purposeful. He knows exactly what He wants to have happen.

My view is no more humanized than yours. There are plenty of humans who know exactly what they want to have happen. But supremely purposeful does not mean they know how to get what they want, so experimentation is one possibility. Another possibility is that your God WANTED unpredictability. Why should he WANT puppets on his strings? (You hate to acknowledge that human free will is an example of unpredictability – or do you believe in predestination?) If he WANTED human unpredictability, maybe he also WANTED unpredictable evolution (but allowed himself to dabble).