David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, October 11, 2019, 19:29 (1868 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Friday, October 11, 2019, 19:49

DAVID: [Adler] is part of my reasoning that God is in charge. He recognizes our vast difference when you constantly try to smudge it.

dhw: I don’t smudge the vast difference (see the “consciousness” thread), and I don’t see the point in your harping on about Adler and totally ignoring the above list of incongruities [I summarized them earlier] which he never discusses.

DAVID: You are calling Adler a poor philosopher. I'm still with him. The 'vast difference' is all that counts. I have agreed that monkeys have a smidgen in that it is obvious they have some sense of what other monkeys are thinking (theory of mind) but smidgens is all they have.

dhw: I am not calling Adler anything. I have no quarrel with the argument that human consciousness is so complex that it can be used as evidence for God’s existence. You are simply trying to divert attention away from the list of bolded incongruities (see yesterday's post)that make YOUR theory (nothing to do with Adler, who never discusses it) so illogical.

You agree Adler's approach is logical. Thanks. Your incongruities are your illogicality, not mine.

DAVID: I believe God created/ran evolution and the history exposes what He did, not why.

dhw: […] You also insist on telling us why he created what he did, his one and only purpose having been to create H. sapiens, although for reasons unknown he decided to spend 3.X billion years creating the non-human evolutionary bush instead. […]

DAVID: I reject your illogical approach (in bold above) to God, because I simply say God created everything and history therefore tells the story.

dhw: The bold above is YOUR illogical approach! History is the bush: the purpose for creating the bush is the reason “why”!

Totally twisted: God wanted humans and used the bush to create them. He runs everything. His choice of method cannot be questioned, in my theology.

DAVID: You simply wonder why He was so patient, and extend the idea that He should have gotten to the evolution of humans sooner. Remember I start with God as the driver of all. I understand you question that. You have accepted at times that if God ran evolution, He obviously was in change, but then you never reach my final conclusion and detour into an irrational side road of why did He wait?

dhw: It is not a matter of patience, but of logic, and logic suggests that if he was totally in charge and only had one purpose, he WOULD have got to the evolution of humans sooner, and even you admit that you have no idea why he didn’t (“I have no idea why God chose to evolve humans over time”). Because of this inexplicable postponement which you have thrust into his thinking, he “had to” specially design 3.X billion years’ worth of non-human life.

Same silliness. I believe God is in charge and history tells us how He created humans. Again your total argument implies He should have been impatient to do it. It is the same weird thought as to why God made the universe so big if all He wanted was an Earth to start life? I have no way of knowing His reasons. Perhaps it was required.

dhw: I therefore challenge your assumption that he only had one purpose, but I offer alternative explanations for the evolutionary bush, all of which you reject because although they are perfectly logical, you have a fixed belief that your God doesn’t think like us, even though he “very well could think like us”!

The key to my approach is Adler and our specialness, and you've agreed that is a good argument for God.