David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, January 11, 2020, 19:16 (1776 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Saturday, January 11, 2020, 19:42

dhw: I am not querying your “evidence for God”; I am querying the logic of your theory concerning your God’s purpose for creating life and evolution and his manner of achieving that purpose.

But you do query as you challenge. I follow Adler. You don't. Philosophically he and I see humans as God's most purposeful creation.

DAVID: I have explained over and over the need for econiches so all could eat over the time evolution took to reach humans, the endpoint.

dhw: And that is what makes your theory so illogical, because you keep insisting that humans were his sole purpose, he always knows how to do what he wants to do, but for unknown reasons decides to spend 3.X billion years not pursuing his purpose, and so has to preprogramme or dabble the making of and interaction between soybeans and fungi, plant roots and nematodes etc. just to keep life going until delay-time has expired.

Your humanized thinking about God firmly excludes that God can create us any way He wants! I don't think He might view it as a delay considering this universe was 3.78 byo when we arrived.

DAVID: Do you ever recognize how fuzzy your thinking is about my series of points: God chose to create us over time. I cannot know His reasons, nor can you.

dhw: There is nothing fuzzy about it. If God exists, he chose to create every single life form that ever lived, or to create a process that enabled his original invention to evolve autonomously into every single life form that ever lived. That does not mean he started out with the single purpose of creating us, that he wanted total control over evolution, or that even if he did have only one purpose (us) he knew how to do it from the start. These are all assumptions on your part and that is why your theory is full of "fuzzy" thinking.

This comment proves we conceive of God totally differently. As long as there is that difference, we will disagree.

DAVID: We can guess at them but as you guess with your human reasoning He turns out quite human in His desires. Where is my 'interpretation' as in your bolded above?

dhw: Explained above. You have no grounds for assuming that your God does not have human desires – or to put it differently, that we do not have desires, ideas, purposes, feelings etc. which your God has passed on to us.

Desires are purposes, not reasoning. You keep applying human reasons to God's actions.

DAVID: What Adler and I interpret from the appearance of humans with consciousness, it is such an amazing event we must be a goal. Our reasoning, not God's!

dhw: Yes, your human reasoning, not God’s. But I have no objection to the idea that we might be “a” goal (as opposed to "the" goal), or to Adler’s argument that our complexity is evidence for God’s existence. This discussion has nothing to do with God’s existence and only concerns your attempts to impose a purpose and method on him that simply do not fit together.

They don't fit together in your mind because of your humanizing thoughts about Him .

DAVID: A book by James Le Fanu asks: "Why Us". It is descriptive with no real answers, as I have no answers. Many of us are quite logical about God.

dhw: But that does not mean your personal theory of evolution is logical, as you have acknowledged in your admirably frank statement that your theory is not illogical “if one does not apply human reasoning to the actual history.” I quite understand why you are so desperate to ignore or disown unequivocal statements like this and God “very well could think like us”, but they represent lucid thinking on your part, and support my objections to your theory as clearly as anything I can ever write.

All taken out of the context at the time. You fully know my thoughts about God, repeated over and over. Your interpretation of my 'lucid' thinking is that you think I am totally illogical about God and His actions. Make up your mind.