David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, April 30, 2020, 15:19 (1666 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: We’re discussing your theistic theories of evolution. I appreciate your uncertainty, but not your unwillingness to pursue the implications of your theories. You insist that your God either preprogrammed or dabbled the whole of evolution. You now have him dabbling the Cambrian. But last week, dabbling denoted some sort of correction, i.e. a degree of weakness.

DAVID: Note my changed mind, please. I've guessed in the past that God pre-programmed or dabbled when necessary. The third possibility is hands-on all the way. And in regard to the Cambrian, it is probable that God had to wait for enough oxygen to appear from the photosynthesis organisms to begin creating those very different organisms that needed it. Keep in mind God was evolving the Earth as He was evolving forms of life, so hands-on coordination makes lots of sense and does not mean weakness.

I do note your changes of mind, and look forward to more of them as we tackle the problems together:
April 5: I now think God directly dabbles most advances/new speciation and preprogramming may have a minor role.
April 23(?): It is certainly possible that an all-powerful, all-knowing God never has to dabble.

And today: hands-on all the way, i.e. a permanent dabble. So he has to directly create lots of different species over thousands of millions of years, but then wait for more oxygen so he can directly create totally different species, and directly organize mass extinctions in order to directly get rid of all the species, econiches, strategies, natural wonders which he directly created but doesn’t want, because all he wants to directly create is H. sapiens. And apparently this makes sense.
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DAVID: Your alternative hypotheses are almost always humanizing His possible desires.

If, as you have said yourself and I have to repeat ad nauseam, he probably/possibly has thought patterns and emotions and attributes similar to ours, it is patently absurd to dismiss alternatives just because they allow for him having thought patterns and emotions and attributes similar to ours.

DAVID: He is obviously so easily inventive, the universe, a special planet Earth to support life, life itself, He does not need experimentation.

dhw: And yet apparently he needed to change his 3.8-billion-year-old programme for the whole of evolution in order to separately create all the new species of the Cambrian – a sign that something must have gone wrong, and yet there is no experimentation.

DAVID: Fully explained above. All necessary timing, not experimentation.

Who made it necessary for him to specially design H. sapiens by specially designing and destroying everything listed above?

DAVID: (under “Theoretical origin of life”) How about a whole new form of biochemistry not based on carbon? God could start inventing life again since you think He has to run experiments.

Please remember that experimentation is just one of the alternatives, designed to fit in with your fixed belief that his one and only purpose was to design H. sapiens.

dhw: And you still haven’t told us whether the mass extinctions were preprogrammed or dabbled, and if they were preprogrammed, why you think he bothered to create the extinct species in the first place, since all he wanted was H. sapiens plus necessary bush.

DAVID: All extinctions I've just listed were due to changing events on an evolving Earth.

Obviously. And presumably your hands-on God changed them after taking all that trouble to design the things he destroyed.

DAVID: God's work involved proper timing. Again your usual distortion: God started life with bacteria and evolved everything from that beginning. How else to get from there to here? Again implies impatiently skipping it all, a humanizing complaint.

Same as above: your totally-in-control, all-powerful, hands-on God could find no other way to specially design H. sapiens than to specially design and destroy billions of non-human life forms, econiches, strategies, lifestyles and natural wonders. And even today, how could we humans survive if God didn’t give nest-building lessons to weaverbirds, and camouflage lessons to cuttlefish and farming courses to ants? With his hands-on approach, he even specially designed Covid-19 to test us. But any alternative to this hypothesis of yours is unthinkable, because – I’ll repeat it as often as you make me repeat it - it might endow God with some human thought patterns, emotions or attributes, although he probably/possibly has human thought patterns, emotions or attributes. I eagerly await your next change of mind.