Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 09, 2020, 10:58 (1626 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If God exists, history tells us that he chose evolution as the method of producing every single organism that ever lived. It does not tell us that he directly designed every single one, or that the only organism he wanted evolution to produce was H. sapiens.

DAVID: Your response lists my true beliefs.

dhw: Yes, they are beliefs and they are not history, though you constantly try to conflate the two.

DAVID: The two are already conflated in my belief that God runs evolution, and I see Him as viewing humans as His desired endpoint, but He fully had to desire to produce all that came beforehand as the necessary food supply. All carefully planned.
And
dhw: You presume that he designed not only each step from bacteria to us, but also each life form, lifestyle, strategy, natural wonder etc. that had nothing whatsoever to do with us. All of these constitute part of the “history of evolution”. Back we go to the question at the heart of this whole discussion: What do you “presume” was his purpose in directly designing all of them?

DAVID: Covered endlessly in econiches discussion re' food supply for billions of eventual humans covering the Earth, as now. Don't you notice it is such a problem there are huge industries in agriculture and animal husbandry to unnaturally develop enough food supply? Your bolded phrase shows what you choose not to recognize.

But you believe that your God directly designed 3.X billion years’ worth of life forms and econiches before humans even appeared on the scene! Stop pretending it never happened! The whole discussion centres on why, if his sole purpose was humans, he specially designed all the extinct life forms and econiches that had nothing whatsoever to do with humans! You have no idea why, and so now you are arguing as if life and econiches only began with humans!

dhw: But wiggling all over the place is not consistent with having a single purpose (H. sapiens) in mind, plus the ability to fulfil that purpose any way he wished, plus the claim that he was always in control! Repeat: it suggests that he WANTED the vast variety of life forms, lifestyles, econiches, natural wonders etc. And that is not consistent with the theory that all he wanted was humans.

DAVID: Again you have forgotten or ignore the obvious. Of course God knew the population we would achieve and the vast bush of life provides the food energy we need to survive.

So God provided 3.X billion years of food for the humans who did not even exist! You abandoned this absurd argument ages ago, so I don’t know why you’ve suddenly gone back to it.
And again, under “problems of food supply”:

DAVID: Full support for my theory as to why God made the bush of life so big and so complex. Econiches and planned production of foods are all vital.

Of course econiches are vital, and always have been for every form of life! But there is no support for your theory that your God specially designed 3.X billion years’ worth of extinct life forms and econiches, and did so for the sole purpose of specially designing H. sapiens. Please stop trying to conflate the importance of econiches with your theory of evolution!

dhw: I would suggest that a theory which posits God as being interested in all the products of his invention is actually more likely than a theory which posits that he deliberately designed all of these products although the only thing he really wanted to design was humans.

DAVID: You misread. I still object to spectacles, etc., […] Of course God was/is interested in all of life's vast bush that He created on his way to humans. He deliberately and purposely designed all of it.

You object to his being interested in the spectacle of life’s vast bush, but of course he was/is interested in all of life’s vast bush. Curiouser and curiouser.