Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, June 05, 2020, 12:32 (1630 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID (re cicadas): Totally unexplained as an instinctual behavior. The bugs did not teach themselves to do this.

dhw: Are you suggesting that your God, whose one and only aim was to directly design H. sapiens, stepped in to teach one particular form of cicada to spend 13-17 years underground? Or did he perhaps preprogramme the cicadas and their cycles 3.8 billion years ago as an integral step on the way to fulfilling his sole purpose of designing H. sapiens?

DAVID: Since it is very difficult to imagine a set of circumstances to force or induce cicadas into this pattern of life, God may well have had a role. Just how is only guesswork, which must include my proposals as to how God works His intentions. The insects are just another part of the necessary bush of life created by God's method of evolution.

You have only ever offered preprogramming or personal dabbling as your God’s “role”, and I eagerly await your explanation for the role of the cicadas in fulfilling your God’s one and only intention of producing H. sapiens. God’s method of evolution provided bushes of life necessary for every life form that ever existed, long, long before H. sapiens arrived.

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?

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

How do you "know" they DON'T? Intelligence is manifested every time they initiate a strategy, lifestyle, response to changing conditions, and their behaviour indicates that they are able to observe, learn and communicate. How do you "know" that your God preprogrammed or dabbled every single strategy, lifestyle, response?

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!

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

Repeat: Of course if he exists he evolved life. My complaint is your insistence that although he had only one purpose, to specially design H. sapiens, and could have done it any way he chose, he specially designed millions of now extinct non-human life forms, econiches, lifestyles and natural wonders before even starting to design the only thing he wanted to design. Please stop dodging.

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

dhw: […] 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.

DAVID: Once again what you have done is reproduce humanized reasons.

You accused me of conjuring up a God without a purpose (bolded). Now you switch to the silly “humanized” argument already obliterated by your own agreement that your God probably has thought patterns similar to ours.

DAVID: You cannot accept the difference argument as it destroys your position about God's purpose.

I have always accepted the difference argument, and have offered you two theistic explanations of evolution that allow for your theory of God’s purpose. Please stop all this dodging!

DAVID: As for Adler, he specifically thought God did the speciation:[…]

No problem. Does Adler also explain why God specifically designed all the different extinct species plus all the different extinct econiches, lifestyles, natural wonders etc. even though in his omnipotence his one and only purpose was to specifically design H. sapiens? Even if he does, all this discussion about Adler is irrelevant. My discussion is with you, not with him, and if you can’t find an explanation for this part of your theory, then your faith in Adler is not going to help you.