David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, February 24, 2020, 12:41 (1732 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My God is purposeful, knows exactly what He is doing, and what He has to do to achieve his goals.

dhw: Agreed. Our disagreement is over your interpretation of his goal (not goals in your case) together with your interpretation of what he “has to do” in order to achieve his goal (H. sapiens). Even you have “no idea” why he “has to” spend 3.X billion years etc., so maybe your guess concerning his goal and his method is wrong.

DAVID: Why do you constantly ignore God's right to choose His method of creation? I have concluded that is what God did as a very purposeful God.

Why do you constantly ignore a very purposeful God’s right to choose a purpose and method of creation different from the one you impose on him? He had every right to invent a mechanism that would give free rein to evolution (allowing for dabbles), and he had every right to create life as an experiment, or as an ever changing spectacle which he could enjoy as a painter enjoys his paintings (your image).

DAVID: In your mind what was God thinking as His purpose when He created this 'fine-tuned-for-life' universe? Your answer from above humanized approach is obviously He'll make it up as He goes. That is NOT humanized? It is not a designer with direct purpose and goals.

Why do you keep ignoring the fact that I offer DIFFERENT hypotheses? One is your fixed belief that his purpose was to create a being similar to himself (i.e. with similar thought patterns and emotions) and experimented in order to get there; one is that this was a late addition to his thinking; one is that his purpose was to create an ever changing spectacle for his own enjoyment. That too is a purpose. Yes, it is humanized, and you have agreed that he probably has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours. Please stop pretending that your interpretation of purpose and method is the only possible way to read your God’s mind.

dhw: Leaving it to chance to decide which species survive and which species die out does not fit in with a God who is in total control. But it fits in perfectly with the proposal that he set the process in motion and then let it run itself (with occasional dabbles).

DAVID: Please read my statement carefully. Letting species die 'as part of a plan' is not chance!

You share Raup’s belief that “Extinctions are pure luck”, which means survival is also pure luck. I have no problem at all in accepting the possibility that your God left it to pure chance as to which species survived and which went extinct: that fits in perfectly with the concept of an ever changing spectacle. But I don’t see how “pure luck” fits in with the concept of a God whose one and only purpose is to create H. sapiens, who is always in total charge, who knows exactly how to fulfil his one and only purpose, and who specially designs every single species that ever existed and every major environmental change and every natural wonder and every econiche. I can’t help wondering what would have happened if by “pure luck”, all his programmes for the human brain, the whale’s flipper, the cuttlefish’s camouflage and the weaverbird’s nest had been wiped out. He’d have had to dabble the whole lot! Of course, you yourself have “no idea” how he could have thought in such terms, which is why you keep telling me not to look for reasons.