David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, December 15, 2019, 10:34 (1803 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Evolution sows many steps from simple to complex. Of course God builds each stage on the last until He reaches the final complexity in humans with consciousness.

dhw: Please explain how every single extinct, non-human life form and econiche and natural wonder in the history of life provided a “stage” on the way from bacteria to H. sapiens.

DAVID: Silly request. Evolution is a staged process with each stage built on the last.

But each stage has led to a vast variety of life forms extant and extinct, as opposed to each stage leading to H. sapiens. That is the basic problem with your whole theory: that your God had only one purpose, but the actual history of life does NOT consist only of stages from bacteria to H. sapiens.

dhw: Your guesses are no less human than mine, unless you believe you have divine knowledge.

DAVID: I view my human guesses as much more logical than yours.

And yet you agree that your theory is only logical if we do not apply it to the actual history.

DAVID: Your usual discussion. My version. God chose to run the entire process of evolution for which we have a full history. Our interpretations about God differ. I see one set of purposes for God, and you find others. I don't try to get behind the reasoning God uses for his purposes. I just look at the results. Your human reasoning about God's purposes makes Him humanized. No logical non sequitur exists for either of us. Our approaches are diametrically opposed.

dhw: Your usual discussion which entails your usual evasion. The result/history has been the vast variety of life forms extant and extinct, which logically suggests that your God wanted the vast variety of life forms extant and extinct.

DAVID: Of course He wanted the bush of life. The econiches as the balance of nature provides food for all who exist at a given time/stage in evolution. What is the evasion, which is your usual contortion of an obvious fact?

Again you state an obvious fact about econiches which has nothing whatsoever to do with your theory that every econiche and every pre-human life form was an interim goal in order to pass the time until your God fulfilled his one and only purpose, the design of H. sapiens. This is the theory which is only logical if we “do not apply human reasoning to the actual history”, and that is what you keep evading.

DAVID: You know it takes a book of reasoning to show that God runs the show. It is not that we 'cannot apply human reasoning' to the history we see. (dhw: but those were your very words!). Human reasoning tells me God chose to evolve humans over time. Human reasoning also tells me not to try to understand why He made that choice over direct creation.

Your human reasoning tells you that your God’s one and only purpose was to design H. sapiens, but you have no idea why he chose to delay your version of his purpose and therefore had to design all the preceding non-human life forms etc.. And so your human reasoning tells you not to challenge the purpose your human reasoning imposed on your God. This is very strange reasoning. I wish your human reasoning would encourage you to challenge your human reasoning to see if the lack of logic might possibly indicate that either it is wrong in its interpretation of your God’s purpose, or it is wrong in its interpretation of God’s nature – the control freak who is always in charge and knows everything beforehand.

DAVID: God's reasons for His purposes can only be guessed at. Why bother. Your attempts to fully understand God always end up humanizing Him.

God’s purposes can only be guessed at, and there is no reason whatsoever to suppose that we do not share some characteristics with the being you believe first created us. As you so rightly say, he “very well could think like us” - another of your own statements which you try so often to evade. Why bother? Why did I bother to set up this website, and why have you bothered over these many years to make such a huge contribution to it? Because both of us are endlessly fascinated by the subjects we discuss.