David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, February 17, 2020, 08:44 (1739 days ago) @ David Turell

I have transferred part of the Shapiro post to this thread, as it has nothing to do with Shapiro.

DAVID: The dinos could not handle the major environmental worldwide changes. God knew all the major general environmental events: ice ages, appearance of oxygen, asteroid strikes if major, as He evolved Earth for life's arrival and thereafter. I'm trying to get you to recognize every minor tornado or flood is a result of his activity, but is beneath His advanced notice. Your approach humanizes him, as usual. >

Dhw: “God knew about” does not answer the question, which is: did he himself CONTROL/PREPROGRAMME THE ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES which, according to you, bacteria and all the life forms, econiches, natural wonders etc, were preprogrammed to cope with or exploit. [Mysteriously, this crucial bolded section was omitted from the quote]. If not, how did he know about them (crystal ball?) to enable his advanced planning? Dabbling suggests responding to or creating new conditions not already programmed 3.8 billion years ago, which in turn suggests that he did NOT know everything right from the start, but learned or changed his plans as he went along.

DAVID: Please read my above now bolded, the reason for dabbles.

I don’t know what you mean by “beneath his advance notice”. Are you now saying that every minor tornado or flood is a dabble? I’m sure all the victims will kneel and thank your God for his lovingkindness. I would have expected his dabbles to be major (the biblical flood, or Chicxulub, with a view to changing the course of evolution). The bolded section of my reply highlights the question you still haven’t answered. If he didn’t control those particular environmental changes, how was he able to preprogramme the anatomical changes necessary to cope with or exploit them?

dhw: Why should your God not behave in a logically understandable way, especially when you agree he probably “has similar thought patterns and emotions”?

DAVID: My quote, bolded, as usual out of context: we do not know His reasons for His actions or purposes and may not follow human thought patterns, but we can be sure He thinks logically as we do. He is not human, and you approach Him as if He were human.

How can the quotes be out of context, and how can they mean anything other than what they say? “He very well could think like us”; “He probably has similar thought patterns and emotions”; “He probably does have some of our attributes.” Of course he’s not human, but that is no reason to assume that his thought patterns must be incomprehensible to us. If we cannot find a logical reason for his actions, then we cannot say he uses logic as we do! The absurd thing about this whole discussion is that we CAN find various logical reasons for his actions. It is only your interpretation of his actions, motives and nature that lead to the illogicality.

DAVID: Your twist is to use it so that you can excuse creating your humanized versions of a purposeful God, who like to experiment because He doesn't know what directions to take. Humanizing theism is your theistic attempt.

Experimentation is only one of the logical explanations I offer for the bush of life, to make it fit in with your version of his one and only purpose. I shan’t repeat the others. Now please tell me why, if it is possible that he has some human attributes, a theory endowing him with some human attributes is out of bounds. And tell me why, for instance, it is less human to be a control freak than to be an interested onlooker.

dhw: It would be totally idiotic to imagine him creating the universe and life if he didn’t have a purpose! But the only purpose you can think of is us humans. You don’t even like to think about him having a purpose in creating humans, let alone in creating billions of non-human life forms, natural wonders etc. extant and extinct.

DAVID: I've clearly explained why there is a huge bush of life, all necessary. Of course He purposely created it!

Your “clear explanation” is that he had only one purpose (H. sapiens), but although he could have fulfilled it in any way he chose, for some unknown reason he spent 3.X billion years specially designing a vast bush of non-human life in order to cover the time he had inexplicably decided to take before starting to design the only thing he wanted to design.

The rest of your post continues to flog the dead horse of humanization, with added appeals to the authority of a philosopher and theologian named Adler, highly respected by the Catholic Church, who has nothing to say about those parts of your theory that defy logic.

Under: "A virus with unrelated new genes"

DAVID: Can this virus be part of common descent?
DAVID: over 90% of genes are entirely new, and the remainder only distantly related to known genes. Where did this come from? Did it invent itself or was it designed. Evolution gets stranger and stranger.

More to the point, perhaps, is why you think your God would have separately designed this particular virus when all he wanted to do was design H. sapiens.