David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, April 20, 2020, 15:17 (1676 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: But if you really want to know, at synagogue I was taught to swallow the OT, at school I was taught to swallow the NT, in later discussions with a particular rabbi and a particular Methodist minister I was taught very different ways of investigating theism, and I have no doubt that imams and Buddhists and process theologians and deists and pantheists and panentheists and atheists and fellow agnostics (many discussions with both!) will all try to teach me how to investigate theism. Now would you please focus on the arguments.

DAVID: Thank you for giving your background. As a kid I was told I had to have a Bar Mitzvah as the first born male on both sides. it really meant nothing other than great birthday party and presents. I got seriously interested in my mid-fifties, and am entirely self-taught from books. Were you warned how not to think about God, as I've been?

If you are told that there is only one way to think about God, that is as good as a warning not to think about him in any other way. Hence the utter folly of inquisitions, religious wars, the terrorist acts of Muslim Fundamentalists. Beware of anyone who tells you there is a right and a wrong way to think about God. Ask them how they know.

dhw: Yep, you’re sure your hidden God is watching, but you ridicule the idea that he created life so that he could watch it.

DAVID: A simple human purpose is all you can imagine.

dhw: I do wish you would tell us what other purposes you imagine, but in any case you’re still left with your own certainty that he’s watching.

DAVID: We are both imagining God. I'm sure He watches us, but as I'm not sure His omniscience lets Him see each of our futures due to free will. We might be able to surprise Him with unexpected activity. Other purposes could be other developing life forms in the universe. All guesswork.

Excellent thinking. If he has deliberately designed us so that we can surprise him with unexpected activity, he could have had precisely the same reason for allowing free rein to evolution itself (always with the option of dabbling). Developing other life forms is fine, but of course that relates to the evolution of the universe, whereas our disagreement is over why he created and watches life on Earth.

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DAVID: Again the usual misinterpretation, as you ignore the reasoning from current facts: I don't know God's reasons before deciding to evolve humans over time. It is easy to guess He foresaw that once we arrived with our special giant brain, we would become a swarm all over the Earth and required a huge well-organized bush of econiches to give us the enormous food supply we needed. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: But that’s what according to you he directly created. And the fact that you don’t know why he directly created the vast number of extinct life forms and econiches before he fulfilled his one and only purpose by directly created humans and their econiches is the whole problem with your theory!

DAVID: You say I have no theory, after I've given you an entirely logical explanation just above!! […] It makes perfect sense to me. The 7.3 billion humans now on Earth need the giant bush, as I've said over and over. Perfectly logical theory, which I under stand fully and you illogically refuse to accept.

You don’t know why he decided to take 3.X billion years to directly design (your definition of “evolve”) humans and their “giant bush”. However, you think that his direct design of 3.X billion years’ worth of extinct “giant bushes” prior to his direct design of humans and their own “giant bush” is a logical explanation!