David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, December 12, 2019, 19:25 (1806 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You don't understand my concept of God. In charge He had the right to chose to evolve humans over time, because history tells us what He did. I don't have to know why He made that decision. I simply accept what He obviously did. Your bolded statement above is entirely off the point as far as I am concerned. You raised it and it is your problem as you constantly try to humanize God and discern His reasoning, to which we are not privy. Guess all you want, but is still all guesses.

dhw: Of course your God had the right to do whatever he wanted. But what on earth is wrong with trying to understand why he might have acted the way he did? Why are you allowed to guess that your God is a control freak who only had one purpose right from the start but DECIDED not to fulfil it for 3.X billion years, and any other guess is to be dismissed because it is only a guess? Maybe he DECIDED to produce the higgledy-piggledy bush, and only DECIDED later to produce humans.

The answer as always is the same: the very unusual result of humans with our level of consciousness makes us so different we are obviously God's primary goal (Adler's precisely logical book). Don't ask about other goals, as you have before as a debating technique. All His goals were stepwise from bacteria to humans with divine purpose. You still can't seem to approach my concept of God as you constantly humanize Him.

dhw: …you simply ignore the inexplicable delay which you have invented and which made it necessary for your God to “cover” the time by specially designing millions of non-human life forms. My “humanizing” offers logical explanations for your “delay” and fits in with your own comment that your God “very well could think like us”.

DAVID: I've said God's logic is like ours. It is decisions of purpose that are beyond our knowledge.

dhw: And yet you categorically reject the idea that your God might have started out with a different purpose from the one you guess at (the creation of H. sapiens). And how can his logic be like ours if your theory concerning his method of achieving your guess about his purpose (inexplicable decision to delay, therefore had to design millions of non-human life forms and econiches and natural wonders to keep life going) requires the abandonment of human reason?

God thinks logically as we do. You will never accept that God had the right to choose to evolve humans from bacteria over time, although you admit a God in change can do what He wants. Talk about inexplicable logic! Constant humanizing God, a person who is like no other person, per Adler.

DAVID: Lots of oxygen allows for evolutionary advances as genomes are changed.

dhw: An important contribution to our discussions on evolution: environmental change allows for evolutionary advances. These are not made in anticipation of environmental changes but occur as a response to them.

DAVID: Your usual mantra. Gould's gaps are not explained and he had to invent the weird idea of punc inc to cover the obvious gaps for which there were not environmental pushes. The human brain growth is a great example. Apes are still in the trees and we are on the ground, and both are doing well. Adler's point. There is no environmental reason for our brains. Adler's other point is that God is a person like no other person. Thus we cannot be compared to Him. Adler's other point is God may not be as personal as religions claim. He thinks those odds are 50/50.

dhw: I don’t understand your objection to Gould. His point was that there were long periods of stasis when there were no environmental changes, and speciation took place when the environment did change. Environmental change doesn’t have to be global! We have no idea what changes might have induced certain apes in certain localities to descend from the trees, but that doesn’t mean there were none! We are not discussing Adler’s opinions about God and man. My point was that if “lots of oxygen allows for evolutionary advances as genomes are changed”, this suggests that evolutionary advances are made IN RESPONSE to environmental change, whereas you have always insisted that your God preprogrammed or dabbled these advances IN ANTICIPATION of environmental change.

We can both agree more oxygen allows more complex organisms to appear, not why they appear. Mammals went swimming and eventually became fish-like, against call odds, like human appearance is against all odds. Evolution is obviously passive if it only responds to environment. You fail to see Adler's and my view that evolution is driven/pushed by God. A vast gulf in philosophic thought.