David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, March 01, 2020, 08:29 (1726 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I find my theory fully logical. It's your problem.

dhw: You can explain the uniqueness of H. sapiens as a logical reason for making him your God’s purpose, but you tell me not to try and find logical reasons for the rest of the above theory because we can’t know God’s reasoning. That does not render your theory “fully logical”

DAVID: When are your theories fully logical? They are all stretches of earlier research that luckily fit your predispositions to avoid God.

Your question does not justify your claim that your own "have-no-idea-why" theory is "fully logical"! However, I have offered you logical theistic theories that even fit in with your belief that H. sapiens was your God’s goal (experimentation, or an idea that came to him late on in the evolutionary process). You have agreed that they are “fully logical”, as are other theories based on a God who is not confined to a single purpose and who is not your control freak, but you have tried to dismiss them by saying they “humanize him”, although you yourself demolish that argument by agreeing that he probably has similar thought patterns and emotions to ours.

dhw: There is no reason at all to assume that if he thinks logically like us and may share some of our emotions, theories which have him thinking logically like us and sharing some of our emotions must be wrong, whereas a theory whose logic escapes us and which only allows him the human attribute of being a control freak must be right.

DAVID: But you've agreed as a theist God creates everything, and humanize him by noting He is a control freak You can't have it both ways! Using the plural in the bold is only your problem, not the rest of us.

It is YOU who humanize him as a control freak by insisting that he designs and controls everything himself. If I were a theist, I would agree that he has created the universe and all the mechanisms that have led to life and evolution, but that does not mean he specially designed every life form, econiche, natural wonder etc. himself. The bold simply refers to the fact that you have no idea why a God in total control and with one single purpose would spend 3.X billion years not fulfilling his purpose. This theory, as far as I know, is unique to yourself, and I suspect that “the rest of us” would be as incapable of finding a logical explanation as you are, which is why you keep telling us that we can never know his reasons.

DAVID: Raup is Darwin. His 'pure luck' in my view means God let the species pass on as part of his plan.

dhw: “Let the species pass on” suggests that he didn’t interfere when sheer chance obliterated them. I still don’t see how pure luck constitutes part of his “tight control” over evolution, or how pure luck can be part of his plan, unless his plan was to allow pure luck to influence the course of evolution. But that fits in with the idea of an unpredictable spectacle rather than “tight control” in pursuit of a single species.

DAVID: You do not seem to understand we are discussing Raup's Darwinian 'pure luck'. God is not like the current nutty humans who are fighting battles to save all endangered species. He let go what He wanted to let go, 99% of all past species.

Of course we’re discussing Raup’s pure luck. Perhaps I misunderstood your references to him. Do you or don’t you believe that “extinctions are pure luck”? If you do, I really can’t see how “pure luck” comes to mean “part of his plan”, unless his plan was to allow luck to play a leading role in the process of evolution. Please clarify.

DAVID (on "SUCKERFISH"): ...as usual evolution produces new ideas for us to use. How did this develop? Not trial and error. It had to be designed.

There is no reason why trial and error should not play a role in design. Just as millions of bacteria die before a solution is found to new problems, lots of pre-suckerfish could have died before the cell communities perfected the system. Alternatively, they may have hit on their winning formula straight away.