David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, March 29, 2020, 13:33 (1698 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

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

Apparently not, since you cannot provide and refuse to look for any rational explanation for the above guess.

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”.

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

The above encompasses special design AND organismal DIY, as he could use either method to provide himself with an ever-changing spectacle. You’ve said before that you think your hidden God watches us with interest. Why do you think that creating interesting things is purposeless and wishy-washy? Humanoid? Why do you think a God whose thought patterns and emotions and attributes are probably similar to ours (your words, not mine) cannot possibly have thought patterns, emotions and attributes similar to ours?

DAVID: […] 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.

Of course if God exists, history tells us what happened and of course what happened would have been his choice. We agree that he could do whatever he wanted, when and how he wanted. All the alternatives I have offered you logically fulfil these criteria. But you have chosen to interpret history and God’s choice in a manner that defies human logic, and that is why you refuse to look for a logical explanation.

Transferred from “Back to Shapiro”:

dhw: I know your position and mine. I am just pointing out to you that your position is no more and no less “beyond a reasonable doubt” than that of the convinced atheist, and since you keep emphasizing that there is no point in using human reason to answer all the awkward questions, quite clearly you can’t answer them, which means your fixed beliefs are based on faith and not on reason.

DAVID: The bold is your usual twisted version of my views. I have politely given you 'guesses' about God's reasoning in the past and you have quoted them to argue against my views. I really can guess as much as you do, but it is difficult not to humanize God if you and I use human reasoning to guess why He chose to do what He did and how He seemed to accomplish His purposes.

I have used your ‘guesses’ to support my alternative views, not to argue against yours. Of course you and I can only use human reasoning, but your human guess concerning his purpose and his choice of method only makes sense if “if we do not apply human reasoning to the actual history.” I see no reason to assume that God’s purpose and method have to be incomprehensible to human logic or why we must reject logical explanations simply because we are human and we mustn’t think that God might have thought patterns similar to ours, even though he probably does have them.

DAVID: My fixed belief is God exists and runs the show with clear purposes in mind. Purposes on the way to a goal: 1) start life and keep bacteria around for larger help with more complex organisms (biomes); 2) create a huge bush of life with proper econiches to supply food for life to have the energy it constantly needs; 3) to use evolution to create humans with their most unusual mental capacity, whose existence or survival is not required as part of the previous bush of life.

Clear purpose, yes, “runs the show” already too nebulous, though I like “show”. He creates it, but that does not mean he writes every word of the script. 1) Agreed. 2) All organisms need food, but why create or initiate a huge bush? Even a tiny bush has to supply food for life to continue. By isolating 2) you have left out the factor that makes your fixed belief so illogical – namely, that he creates millions and millions of twigs for the sole purpose of creating one: 3) No one will deny our unusual mental capacity, but there is not one multicellular species in the whole of the evolutionary bush of which it could not be said that their existence or survival is/was not required as part of the previous bush, since bacteria have survived very well without any of their “descendants”. You have “no idea” why your God chose to design the one and only species he wanted by first creating millions of other species, econiches etc., and that is why you have to tell us that we mustn’t look for reasons.