David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, January 23, 2020, 22:53 (1764 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: 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: Your word 'compelled' is the distortion. God is allowed to choose to take time and evolve.

dhw: OK then, he didn't HAVE to take 3.X billion years to start doing what he wanted to do, because he can do what he wants, so he CHOSE to take 3.X billion years, and we shouldn't ask why. Correct?

Correct. You can't argue that point. God can do what He wants any way He wants.

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.

dhw: We both believe evolution produced the vast bush of life extant and extinct....Or are you now opting for the Genesis version?

DAVID: No! You are the one constantly suggesting He should have used the Genesis version.

dhw: Please explain how our arrival was “very different from the earlier process”. What different processes are you thinking of?

Our extraordinary form and brain ability is an unexpected appearance a huge gap not seen before except in the Cambrian Explosion

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.

dhw: 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:As this answer fits: DAVID: Your humanizing approach describes Him as unreasonably doddering around.

dhw: Experimenting is not doddering, and how does experimenting NOT involve mental processes?

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

dhw: 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: Logical but humanizing.

dhw: Once more: How do you know that your God does not have thoughts and attributes in common with humans?

How do you know what He thinks? I agree He probably does have some of our attributes.

dhw: You know perfectly well that I am not talking about gaps in the fossil record but THE gap in your belief that an all-powerful God has one purpose but spends 3.X billion years pursuing anything but his one purpose.

That is not a gap if you accept He has the right to choose His methods, as you have mentioned above.

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Extended to what? We are the pinnacle of creation. Grander creatures than us?

dhw: More of what Shapiro calls “large organisms chauvinism”. Even you have suggested that your God might enjoy his works much as a painter enjoys his paintings. Are we his only works?

We are by far an amazingly advanced creation. Shapiro's catch phrase has no real meaning beyond a complaint about our thinking about lesser animals, which our advanced estate certainly allows.