David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, December 08, 2019, 08:22 (1810 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I directly believe God is the engineer of evolution and designed all species. I don't need to know why God delayed, because that is exactly what He did as his decision.

dhw: It is your interpretation of his purpose and method that has created the delay. If either of these was different from your fixed beliefs, the idea of a “delay” would disappear!

DAVID: 'Delay' is entirely your concept. God in charge desired to produce humans and chose to do it by evolving them from bacteria. Evolution takes time, so it is obvious He accepted the delay as a natural consequence.

You say you don’t need to know why God delayed, but that is what he decided to do, so how can it be entirely my concept? It is YOUR concept that his only purpose was to produce humans, and so of course the 3.X billion years of not producing humans constitutes a delay. If he had a different purpose, e.g. to produce a vast variety of different life forms, there would have been no “delay”. If his one and only purpose was to produce humans, and he was experimenting in order to do so, that would explain the “delay”. But you have no idea why there was a delay – you just “accept” your subjective interpretation because you are convinced that "that is exactly what he did as his decision".

dhw: I cannot accept your theory of God’s combined purpose and method (not “how you believe in God”), and the fact that you have to abandon human logic in order to believe it is unlikely to win you many human supporters!

DAVID: Faith is arrived at by seeing evidence beyond reasonable doubt. I used plenty of reason to get where I am. Your most unreasonable thinking is that obvious design, which requires a designer leads you the fence.

As you very well know, I am not questioning your well reasoned faith in the existence of a designer God. I am questioning your highly subjective interpretation of his purpose and method in creating life and evolution.

dhw: Please explain what you meant when you said that your THEORY about your God’s choice of method (please don’t pretend you know that your choice was his choice) was not illogical “if one does apply human reasoning to the actual history”.

DAVID: Note I've said God thinks logically just as we do. His decisions on purposes are unknown and guessed at.

You have said that your interpretation of his purpose and method requires us NOT to apply human reasoning to the actual history. That means he does NOT think logically as we do, but he has some sort of logic of his own which is different from ours.

DAVID: The definition of evolution is that it evolves OVER TIME.

dhw: Of course it does. But evolution is not confined to the evolution of humans! If your God had only one purpose (humans), in your own words, “the process…should proceed into a specific direction”,but for 3.X billion years it did not!

DAVID: What!!! Of course there was a specific direction to arrive at us, constant steps to more complexity. You're ignoring the bush is required for all to eat. "Balance of nature", econiches you accept and then forget.

You accept and then forget that balance of nature applies to ALL species, and since life began with bacteria, constant steps to more complexity applies to ALL multicellular species. If your God’s only purpose was to produce us, you have no idea why he spent 3.X billion years producing anything but us, but you “accept” his inexplicable decision to delay fulfilling his one and only purpose.

dhw: You totally reject the possibility that he might have given up control over evolution (you “humanize” him as a control freak), and yet you believe he gave up control by creating free will. I only wish you would apply the same human logic to your theory of evolution as you do to the case for design as argued so cogently in your excellent books.

DAVID: Thank you, but you won't accept a designer from my books. Your argument that free will in humans indicates He would give up control over the direction of evolution is a strain in credulity. God controlled the new physical forms as evolution was directed to produce humans who would have consciousness and free will. You will note free will is not a physical form.

Free will is an example of God’s willingness to give up control. Of course uncontrolled evolution is a strain on your credulity if you have a fixed belief that your God did not give up control! That is the issue between us in this discussion! And the biggest strain on credulity comes from your insistence that his only purpose was to produce humans, but at the same time you tell us that “the process of producing physical forms should proceed into a specific direction if humans are to be evolved”, and you have no idea why he delayed by spending 3.X billion years NOT proceeding in that specific direction! Either you have mistaken his purpose, or you have mistaken his method, or you are simply abandoning all human logic (as you admit at one moment and deny the next).