Natures wonders: ants and other insects farm (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, May 21, 2020, 13:56 (1437 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: […] Your mamby-pamby version of God is not OK with me, ever! My God has His purpose guide Him all the time.

dhw: So does mine. Please stop assuming that your God could not possibly have had any purpose other than the one you impose on him, and could not possibly be anything other than all-powerful and all-knowing and all-controlling. And please don’t tell us that “Any evolved process God set in motion is under his control, since he can let it continue or stop it as he wishes”, cannot possibly mean the process of evolution.

DAVID: All powerful or not is a human conception of Him. To each his own. As for the bold, why not?

So your conception of him is just as “human” as my various alternatives. As for the bold, it doesn’t make sense to say that your God might have set any evolved process in motion and allowed it to continue etc., and then claim that “any process” does not include the actual process of evolution! In any case, how do you know?

DAVID: Our glaring difference is you never accept the degree of specialness I do, or its theological import. […]

Your usual escape route. I accept our specialness, and I have even offered two theistic interpretations of evolution that allow for the targeted creation of H. sapiens AND the vast bush of extinct non-human life forms and econiches that preceded us: experimentation to get what he wanted, or a late arrival in his thoughts. This is not lip service. I am an agnostic, not an atheist. You reject both explanations of the non-human bush of life on grounds of “humanizing” God because you believe that your God is all-knowing and all-powerful – though you admit above that this concept is just as human as any other.

dhw: […] why do you assume that he directly designed all those millions of extinct life forms when all he wanted to directly design was H. sapiens?

DAVID: What I reject from your thought patterns about God is in your humanized version, which is always present, God allows evolution to happen without guidelines.

The proposal that God invented a mechanism to enable organisms to design their own evolution is no more “humanized” than the theory that God knows and controls everything and does all the designing himself.

DAVID: My God always speciate new advanced species, and the type of evolution He allows on its own is species variation, no more. What I constantly object to in the discussions is the way you always manage to stretch interpretations of my ideas to somehow fit your weird theories, and when I object, you claim I have retracted a position that you have invented.

I know what you believe your God does, and why he does it, and constantly remind you of the fact that you have “no idea” why he directly designed 3.X billion years’ worth of non-human life forms and econiches (let alone lifestyles and natural wonders) although his only purpose was to design H. sapiens and his food supply. This is totally separate from the alternatives I offer, but time and again you make statements which (a) confirm my scepticism concerning your theory, and (b) allow for my different theories to be possible. There is, for instance, nothing to “stretch” if you agree that your God probably/possibly has thought patterns, emotions and attributes similar to our own. That doesn’t mean you support any of my “humanizing” alternatives, but it obliterates your objections to them on the grounds that they endow him with thought patterns, emotions and attributes similar to ours.

DAVID: The bold is your constantly repeated mantra that will not admit God has a right to choose His method of creation, and when called on it you will agree He has the right to choose. And turn right around and ask me 'why' for the ten thousandth time.

This is not my “mantra”! It would be unbelievably stupid for anyone who accepts the possibility of God’s existence to claim that he did not have the right to choose. I don’t ask you why he has or doesn’t have the right to choose. I ask you why he would have chosen the version of evolution that you impose on him, as bolded above. And you have no idea why.

DAVID: Will you every recognize we envision two very different Gods? Your so-called theism is God-lite. And of course, I am trapped in using some humanizing terms because we don't have any others to employ. You complain about it, but you know that full well.

There is no such thing as “God-lite”. If God exists, he has just as much right, for instance, to create a mechanism that allows evolution to take its own course (but “stop it if he wishes”) as to hands-on dabble every species. I don’t complain about you using “humanizing” terms. I complain that you dismiss theories as “humanizing” although your own is no more and no less “humanizing” than those I offer, and your theory defies human logic whereas you admit that my alternatives don’t.