Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, June 04, 2020, 20:16 (1631 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: And so every time your bees and ants and a few million kindred life forms come up with their new strategies, it’s because your God has twiddled their genome for them. You just can’t imagine that he might have given all organisms the ability to learn from their observations and to pass the new information on to their buddies.[…]

DAVID: Once again you have God giving them intelligence. That is a non-answer as to how it happens naturally.

dhw: Why is it not natural for an intelligent organism to observe, learn and communicate?

They must have the mental power of an understood correlation of separate events. Why do you know they have that?

DAVID: Why can't God chose evolution as His method of creation? That is what happened. Of course there is 'no logical link' to humans appearing. That is why I say we are very improbable!

dhw: Same old diversionary tactic. Of course God, if he exists, chose evolution as His method of creation. But the issue - as you well know but are determined to dodge – is not our improbability but why, if his sole aim was to design H. sapiens, which he could have done any way he liked, he proceeded to design millions of non-human life forms, econiches, strategies etc. beforehand. Please, please, stop this dodging!

DAVID: Same old dodge from you. You allow Him to evolve life and then complain about His evolving humans over the time required. More than weird logic.

dhw: I complain about your making him specially design millions of extinct non-human life forms etc. when his sole purpose was to specially design H. sapiens. Stop dodging!

Total non-sequitur. You have granted his right to evolve life and then complain about it!

DAVID: The primary disagreement is you don't identify a legitimate purpose for God and I do.

dhw: You are clearly implying that your God’s enjoyment of his own work (direct or indirect) is not a “legitimate” purpose. How do you know?

DAVID: Your enjoyments for God are simply going back to humanizing Him. Yes, He might have enjoyed all of evolutionary creations, but that is a side issue to his purpose of eventually creating humans. Our difference still boils down to God's purpose and you suggest He had none. Even though we are so different with consciousness, therefore unexplained.

dhw: “Humanizing” is no argument, because there is no reason to suppose that he does not have thought patterns similar to our own, as you have pointed out yourself. I absolutely reject your latest straw man – that I propose a God without a purpose. If he exists, then of course he must have had a purpose in creating life. I have offered you two theistic explanations for the history of life which allow for your own view of his purpose. I have offered other explanations allowing for the overall purpose of an infinitely varied spectacle for him to watch and even dabble in if he feels like it. You deliberately ignore these and cling to Adler (who apparently doesn’t even address your theory of evolution) in order to avoid facing the illogicality of the theory bolded above.

Once again what you have done is reproduce humanized reasons. Adler's point is not what you imply, which is no defense to his argument about our unexplained difference. You cannot accept the difference argument as it destroys your position about God's purpose. As for Adler, he specifically thought God did the speciation:

https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j17_2/j17_2_80-82.pdf

Adler examines in great detail the question of how many ‘species’ exist so he can answer the question ‘… how many creative acts of God are required to explain the evolutionary jumps?… Adler’s …view, which he considers “almost completely demonstrated”, is …Within a species, changes have occurred, but each species itself is an fixed type—immutable in its essence, and coming into being only by an act of God. Adler suspects that each species was created in several different types, underived from each other—for example, the separate creation of flowering and non-flowering plants.

I'll stick with Adler. The rest of the article describes Adler's view of Darwinism. You won't like it. But it is an honest appraisal in that it lacks real science.