David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, January 24, 2020, 11:56 (1763 days ago) @ David Turell

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?

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

If he exists, then I agree. That is why it is so illogical, if he can fulfil his purpose any way he wants, to make him have only one purpose and then to make him decide not to fulfil his purpose but instead to pursue “interim goals”.

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

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

You have not answered the question. What process do you think he used to produce H. sapiens that was different from the process he used to produce all the other organisms in the history of life?

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?

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

I don’t know what he thinks, and so I consider different theories and test them against the actual history. You have found all of these logical, unlike your own, but you dismiss them as “humanizing”. Now that you agree that he “probably” does have some of our attributes (I shall keep this quote for future reference), perhaps you will agree that one of the various alternatives might be true, and since they are logical, they may well be more likely than your own illogical one (single purpose, can do it any way he likes, but instead pursues 3.X billion years’ worth of “interim goals”).

DAVID: 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?

DAVID: 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.

His comment was directed against those people who insist that other organisms cannot be intelligent.