David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, March 28, 2020, 20:30 (1699 days ago) @ dhw

Transferred from “Back to Shapiro”:

dhw: There is no humanizing involved if I ask you to explain why an all-powerful God with a single purpose (H. sapiens) might decide not to fulfil his single purpose and to design countless other non-human organisms instead. That is when all of a sudden it becomes pointless to ask for explanations because we can’t know the truth. The only truth we can apparently know is your version of God’s nature, purpose and method to achieve that purpose!

As I've said many times, I can guess just as well as you can

DAVID: Of course I have decided upon a form of God's personality as all-powerful and precisely purposeful. Of course He then fits what I theorize as to how He does things.

dhw: “Precisely purposeful” for you is limited to the design of H. sapiens, which leads you to the inexplicable scenario above! Designing millions of life forms - or giving them the means to design themselves - in order to provide an ever changing spectacle would also be “precisely purposeful” and either method would also fit “how he does things”.

Again, your so-called god backs off purposeful design and lets organisms do it themselves. Not very purposeful, but wishy-washy and humanoid.

DAVID: I have given reasons as to why I think He has done what He has done. But I will not go beyond that point. I cannot know or even try to know His reasoning behind the results I see.

dhw: The only reason you have given is that all he wanted was to produce H. sapiens. You believe he could have done it any way he chose. The result of what he did is 3.X billion years of non-human forms, followed by 0.X billion years of forms eventually culminating in H. sapiens. And you have no idea why he chose this method of producing H. sapiens, but it doesn’t strike you that perhaps one of the two basic premises described in my first two sentences might be wrong.

No it doesn't strike me as wrong, history tells us what God did, and since He is in charge as I view him, what happened had to be His choice of action. It is your problem, not mine

dhw: I have accepted Adler’s logic, but as I pointed out yesterday, he “only offers humans as logical proof of God’s existence and purpose and does not provide one iota of support for the rest of your theory.”

DAVID: Stop denigrating Adler and my views of his books.

dhw: I have not denigrated his books, and I have not denigrated your views of his books. You have told me that he regards humans as providing evidence for the existence of God and for God’s purpose, and I have told you that I accept the logic of those arguments. What I denigrate is the illogical theory you have extrapolated from them.

It is your logic problem, not mine as described above.

DAVID: The bold is your usual Adler comment. Adler's support is a clear picture of God's purpose.

The logic of which I accept.

DAVID: Your bolded remark has no place in this discussion. […] My theory about how God ran evolution has nothing to do with Adler, and never has. What is 'one iota' supposed to mean?

dhw: Precisely what it says and what you have just confirmed! There is no point in repeatedly quoting Adler’s view of God’s purpose, when it is the REST of your theory that I am criticizing!

Your critique is totally illogical to me since you do not recognize that I view God as totally capable of doing whatever He wants and choosing His mode of accomplishment.

DAVID: Starting as I did as a vague informal agnostic, a Jew by culture primarily, I needed to be self-taught to pursue the issue. In this arena of thought I am an autodidact. And you?

dhw: The same. If anyone is interested, I was brought up as a Jew, began to ask awkward questions in my teens, briefly became an atheist, but in my late teens read Origin of Species, thinking it would confirm my atheism. I was bowled over by it and surprised by Darwin's references to a Creator. In my last year at school I gave a lecture to the History Society in which I emphasized the fact that Darwin’s theory did not exclude the existence of God, as he himself emphasized both in the book (but apparently these comments are only to be found in later editions) and in his private life. But the book had also revealed to me the astonishing complexities of life itself – long before the discovery of DNA – which made it clear to me that the origin of life, which Darwin explicitly avoids discussing in the book, was a mystery that evolution did not and could not solve. I too am an autodidact. We all learn from one another, but since the truth is inaccessible to all of us and there is no single way of seeking it, one could argue that the quest makes all of us autodidacts.

We are birds of a feather.