Unanswered questions (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, August 15, 2019, 19:37 (1709 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Thursday, August 15, 2019, 20:12

DAVID: If you accept my proposition that it is conceivable God chose to evolve all of life, and you have in the past, then my point in logical.

dhw: If God exists, then of course he chose to evolve the whole of life. But firstly by “evolve” you mean specially design, whereas I propose (theistic version) that he chose to create an autonomous inventive mechanism which enabled organisms themselves to run evolution and produce the whole of life as we know it. Secondly, even with your definition, your above statement does not tell us that he chose to specially design the whale’s flipper, the monarch’s lifestyle and the weaverbird’s nest for the one and only purpose of getting them all to eat or be eaten by one another until he evolved (= specially designed) Homo sapiens, which was the only thing he wanted to evolve = (specially design)! THIS is your complete theory, and you keep admitting that you have “no idea” why he would have chosen such a method to fulfil such a purpose, so please stop pretending that it is logical. Should be the end.

DAVID: The two bolds in your statement are totally in conflict with each other. God 'Evolving the whole of life' must be considered as God designing each stage like whale flippers.

dhw: You seem to have forgotten my (theistic) proposal that he chose to evolve the whole of life by designing an autonomous inventive mechanism that would enable organisms to do their own designing. Why "must" your "evolution = special design" be the only acceptable interpretation?

You can interpret God any way you want. I view Him as purposeful and controlling and His evolved organisms, as presented, are not capable to do their own design, in my fixed view.

DAVID: And you keep distorting my 'no idea' which refers only to my point that I do not know why God chose evolution in the first place over direct creation. Your continual distortion of my position will keep this thread going. I will not be misrepresented.

dhw: Evolution of what? You keep leaving out the fact that (a) your God “evolved” billions of non-human life forms etc. although his only purpose was to “evolve” H. sapiens, and you ignore the fact that preprogramming and dabbling are both forms of direct creation!

My definition of direct creation is the Biblical story of one complete stage at a time, not a long-term evolution of forms.

dhw ; If you feel I have misrepresented you, then please explain once and for all why your God fulfilled his sole purpose of specially designing H. sapiens by first specially designing every other non-human life form, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct so that all the life forms could eat or be eaten by one another.

I'll repeat the proposition you refuse to recognize. God chose to evolve all forms starting with bacteria, and currently ending with humans. Why is that concept so hard to accept? I fully believe that He made choice, and that is more probable than your insistence on a God-given IM. Your complaint suggests you believe God would not want to do it patiently over time. How do you know that? Controlling creations by evolutionary methods implies just exactly what I propose, designing all stages as they changed from simple to more complex. This statement should be quite clear to anyone who reads it . Doesn't God have the right to choose His methodology?