David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 07, 2020, 17:06 (1689 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Dabbling = direct creation, so you are clearly opting for biblical creationism (= the different species of living things were separately created by God, as opposed to their having evolved). I don’t have a problem with this as your faith, but it somewhat contradicts your message to me a couple of days ago: “Note religions will give you all the answers you want, all from human reasoning. I carefully avoid that approach […].”[…]

DAVID: As for direct creation (DC), I mentioned it as an answer to your weird objection to God taking His time to create us. I view DC in two ways: the Bible says a mistranslated seven days. Really seven eons! So DC is in two references: immediate creation of everything at once, or delayed stepwise DC over the 3.8 billion years required.

So we have now established that you are a Creationist as far as speciation is concerned. Forget the seven days – that is not relevant to our discussions - and I have no idea why you are talking of “delay” or the time “required”. Required for what? My “weird” objection is that, like you, I have no idea why an all-powerful, all-purposeful God, with only one purpose in mind – to create us – should spend thousands of millions of years directly creating thousands of millions of now extant non-human life forms, econiches, lifestyles, strategies and natural wonders before directly creating lots of different hominins and homos before directly creating us, his sole purpose.

DAVID: A fully purposeful God with exact goals in mind will not allow any other approach, such as the dhw suggestion of giving the organisms means of evolving. That means God gives up some/ or in large part directional control of evolution. [...]My conclusion is the evidence supports a God who is extremely purposeful.

dhw: Who in his right mind would believe in a God who created the universe and life without having a purpose? This whole discussion is about your restriction of God’s purpose in creating billions of years’ worth of non-human life forms etc., extant and extinct, to the production of H. sapiens. (And you don’t even want to speculate on your extremely purposeful God’s purpose in producing H. sapiens!) Here is another theistic theory for you: [I shan’t repeat the theory here]. Now please explain why this theory is not extremely purposeful.

DAVID: Contains all our personal guesses about God's reasons for His actions in creating us. Fun discussion filling time. I've had fun and entertainment. Any chance of reasonable proofs? No. I won't leave the point that we are God's purpose. Obvious to Adler and me, but not to you. Are we any further ahead in understanding? Yes, it has helped me refine my guesses about the relative importance of preprogramming vs. dabbling. Direct design (dabbling) is much more important, considering all the biochemical complexity I have presented here.

Good to hear that you have at last accepted the unreasonableness of a 3.8-billion-year-old programme for every life form etc for the whole of life’s history. Perhaps in time you will agree that an all-powerful, all-purposeful God is unlikely to use the above bolded method to fulfil the above bolded purpose.
Meanwhile, I asked you to explain why my theory was not “extremely purposeful”. Once again, you refuse to answer a direct question. And here comes the final illogicality:

DAVID: Why do you ask that question [what is the “proper-sized bush?”] when you fully should know the answer from my previous comments? The current human population requires a bush of that size […]

dhw: You know perfectly well that I am not questioning the need for the CURRENT bush. I am asking why an all-powerful God who could create us any way he wanted had to create 3.X billion years’ worth of non-human bush before getting on to the only species plus econiche(s) that he wanted to create!

DAVID: Don't you realize how inconsistent you are? You recognize the need to create the bush….

No, I don’t recognize the need to create 3.X billion years’ worth of non-human bush if your God’s one and only purpose was to design H. sapiens!

DAVID: … and then complain about the delay to make humans! You obviously propose God should not have been patient in creating the process of evolution.

With my theist hat on, I have no problem with God creating the process of evolution! My problem, as you well know but desperately seek to avoid, is the illogical theory bolded above. It is this theory which creates an inexplicable delay! I propose that a purposeful God would stick to his purpose, and therefore the direct creation of all those non-human twigs either had a purpose independent of humans, or (less likely, in my view) constituted experiments in the quest to create a being with thought patterns, emotions and attributes similar to his.

DAVID: What! You want is instant creation of the bush and us? Didn't happen.

According to your latest theory, he directly creates all species and natural wonders etc, etc. We’re not talking about “instant”, if you mean everything all at once. I’m all in favour of the theory that your God wanted to create a long-lasting, ever changing bush. I’m only objecting to the theory bolded above - the one you agree is not illogical so long as we don't apply it to the actual history.