David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 22, 2020, 14:33 (1765 days ago) @ David Turell

I summarized David’s theory yet again, and will only reproduce David’s answers:

DAVID: […] [God] has the obvious right, 'in control' to use any method He wishes to pursue His goals.

Of course he has the right. But that does not mean he chose the method you impose on him in order to fulfil the purpose you impose on him!

dhw: Please pinpoint any “distortion” up to this point.

DAVID: The distortion is the 'time it took' issue. God CHOSE to evolve. It HAD to take time.

The issue is not time as such but the gap between your version of purpose and implementation. You wrote: all other life forms etc. were “interim goals to establish the necessary food supply to cover the time he knew he had decided to take.” Do you now wish to change your statement: “….to cover the time he knew he HAD TO take”, and if so, please explain why a God who can choose any way he likes to do what he wants to do was compelled to spend 3.X billion years not doing what he wanted to do. NB I am questioning your logic, not your God’s.

DAVID: I can identify the 'purpose' as the creation our human unusual abilities. Evolution as an example of the creation process is all explanatory and 'logical' until our arrival, which is especially unusual and obviously very different than the earlier process.

We both believe evolution produced the vast bush of life extant and extinct. “Especially unusual” does not invalidate the unusualness of every multicellular life form compared to bacteria, which have survived since the beginning, and we both believe that all of them evolved by the SAME process as humans, namely by descent from earlier forms. Or are you now opting for the Genesis version?

dhw: [….] you constantly present your interpretations as facts, and then you say we should not question the logic of what you believe to be the facts.

DAVID: Faith changes beliefs into personal facts.

Yes, but since they are “personal”, they cannot be taken for granted as the basis of any theory.

DAVID: The 'actual history' concerns the appearance of stages of evolution, the obvious pattern of advancing complexity and then suddenly enormous physiotypical and mental advances.

Yes, that is what I call the bush of life. Nothing to do with the existence of God, God’s sole purpose, and God’s method of achieving that purpose. All the theistic alternatives I have offered constitute a logical explanation that fits your God’s possible purpose to his possible method. Only yours fails to do so.

DAVID: I'm sorry my logic is not your logic, which answers nothing but poses only questions and advances theories that support the proposition that complex advances can occur without deep mental reasoning, as human experience demands.

I have offered possible answers to all the evolutionary questions I pose, and ALL of them entail “deep mental reasoning”. Please name one of them that doesn’t.

DAVID: Your humanizing approach describes Him as unreasonably doddering around.

dhw: […] The first[hypothesis] indicates that, in your own words, he “clearly recognized the problems evolution presents and sets about to solve them as he goes forward”, which is not a bad description of how inventors achieve their goal through experimentation. The second has the purpose of seeing what will happen if…(another form of experimentation), and then building on those results to form new ideas. Why is that “doddery”?

DAVID: Your usual total humanized misinterpretation of a purposeful God.

dhw: Why “misinterpretation”, since you cannot “know” his purpose, abilities or methods but you assume that he has a normal, logical mind and these two explanations are logical.

DAVID: My God does not need to experiment.[…]

That particular hypothesis is a logical explanation of the gap, which you cannot explain, between your view of his purpose (H. sapiens) and his implementation of that purpose (3.X billion years of non-human life forms etc.)

DAVID: I see his method in the history of evolution.

No you don’t. You can’t explain the gap, and that is the point at which you complain that we shouldn’t try to explain something we can’t know. You’re all in favour of logic until you come to the point that is not logical.

DAVID: [..] Anyone who can create the grandeur of this enormous universe must be capable to create anything He wants.

Agreed. And that is why I keep asking why he would create all the billions of stars and galaxies and solar systems, and all the wonders of life, if he only wanted us. I suggest that if your God exists, it would be logical to assume that his purpose extended beyond us.