David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, February 24, 2020, 18:29 (1732 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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).

My God is not the humanized one you describe. My God wants tight control to achieve His exact purposes. I ignore your fanciful versions of God with human thoughts, experimenting or allowing organisms to experiment.

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.

dhw: 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.

Read God's personality and purposes anyway you wish. I have my firm view of a God who is a personage like no other person, and we cannot read His mind to know His reasoning behind His revealed purposes, as shown by what exists.

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!

dhw: 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.

Once again you have conflate a bunch of distortions and run wild with your imagination about my God, who is someone you cannot seem to imagine or accept as possible from my descriptions of His purposeful creations. M y God can never by your humanized version. God allows species to die as part of his plan. He doesn't change them to accommodate His plan for advancing evolution. Raup's view is from a Darwinian standpoint that their bad luck is due to a lack of adaptive speciation. Same result, from two different viewpoints. From any
viewpoint, 99% of all species are gone, God's plan, Raup's luck.