David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 21, 2019, 22:10 (1797 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I view your proposals as inventing a humanized God. Your take on God is wildly different than mine. You view my view as illogical. I view your views as logical humanized versions of God.

dhw: Thank you for agreeing yet again that my alternatives are logical, and for the earlier observation that your God “very well could think like us.” I could hardly wish for a clearer nod of recognition, except that you keep on trying to discredit your own judgement.

They are logical for a humanized God, no more. My judgement is quite clear and unchanged.

DAVID: Like you I form my views from an amalgam of thoughts and contributions from various experts. Adler offers one aspect; our unexpected uniqueness. ID research offers other parts. You are wedded to Shapiro's proposals.

dhw: I have no objection to Adler’s focus on our uniqueness or to the ID argument that the complexities of life indicate intelligent design. It is the combination of ideas bolded above that you yourself acknowledge requires nothing illogical “if one does not apply human reasoning to the actual history”.

Same distorted tired mantra. I do not try to understand God's reason for his purposes. That is the history to which I refer, and you know it. The actual history is evidence of God's work, not the 'why' of it. Your 'why's' are humanizing all the time, and just guesses.

DAVID: God in running evolution preferred branches of development, not single twigs. History declares that fact.

dhw: Of course it does. And that is why your theory cannot be logically applied to the actual history. As you have said yourself, the “process of producing physical forms should proceed into a specific direction if humans are to be evolved”. It didn’t, and that is what makes your theory so illogical.

It did produce us, but I'm sure you know evolutionary history tells us a huge bush was produced, and it is required to provide the balance of nature that feeds all. If God went directly from bacteria to us, what would we eat?

DAVID: But it did have exact directionality to H. sapiens when the time came 300,000 year ago. Upright beings go back more than 2-3 million years with a steady progression of more advanced forms.

dhw: But according to you, your God’s one and only purpose was to produce H. sapiens, so yet again: 1) why did he decide to wait 3.X billion years before embarking on the “evolution” of H. sapiens, thereby having to design billions of other non-human life forms etc. as bolded above, and 2) why did he specially design all these itty-bitty “advances” when over and over again you tell us that evolution is the history of new species produced by jumps and not by itty-bitty “advances”? Your only answer is that this is what happened and therefore God planned it or dabbled it to happen like this. You won’t even consider the possibility that your own human reading of his mind might be wrong, illogical though it is. Maybe he was experimenting; maybe humans were a latecomer in his thinking; or maybe – to use your own intriguing expression – this was a “natural living development”, i.e. each change came about as the intelligent response of intelligent cell communities (perhaps designed by your God) to new conditions and demands or opportunities. Now there’s a thought!

Your weirdly strange thinking continues. I've given you reasons for all of your 'problem' objections. The bold above brings up Darwin, not my theory which is formed from Gould's gaps among many other considerations. My quote above says 'steady progression'. You think you have a logical answer by telling us simple cells can design, when you accept the issue of design doesn't allow you to be an atheist. The whole thing is your dilemma, not mine. The picket fence is your uncomfortable problem. I'm quite comfortable in my position with the ID folks.