Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, June 12, 2020, 11:51 (1623 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I dodge nothing. You first agree that God could have chosen to evolve humans, and then you express surprise that so many forms over so many stages took place first!

dhw: My surprise is that an all-powerful God whose sole purpose (your theory) was to evolve (in your vocabulary = directly design) H. sapiens, directly designed 3.X billion years’ worth of life forms that had nothing to do with H. sapiens. This is the central point which even now you are still dodging.

DAVID: You have invented a so-called dodge. Once again, from history, with God in charge of creating history. it is obvious God chose to evolve humans by first creating previous forms over the time required. You imply God should have directly created humans. It didn't happen that way.

You are still dodging! It is obvious that there were millions of life forms, econiches, lifestyles, natural wonders etc. thousands of millions of years before humans. It is not obvious from history that your God directly designed them all, and as I wrote yesterday: I keep asking you to provide a connection between the 3.X billion years’ worth of extinct life forms, econiches and problems, and humans and their econiches and problems, and you cannot find one, which is why you keep changing the subject.

dhw: There is no “bumbling” involved if your God creates a spectacle for himself to enjoy, or in the concept of a God who does not know everything in advance but experiments or, alternatively, deliberately sets in motion a process that may lead to unpredictable results (as with free will). All of these explain what you call the “historical record”, and fit in with your agreement that God probably has thought patterns similar to ours. […]

DAVID: And all your suppositions about God's thoughts are obviously humanized suggestions. You deny that point, because you feel you can think like God, but all you are doing is attributing you human thinking to Him. God's reasons are known only to Him.

I have never denied that point! I find it totally feasible that if God exists, he will probably have thought patterns similar to our own – as you rightly pointed out. The fact that God’s reasons are known only to him does not lend one jot of credibility to your theory – conjured up by your human mind, which can find no logical way of connecting its basic premises.

DAVID: …you are correct about God's interests. I certainly assume God is interested in all his evolutionary creations as they formed econiches, as He worked His evolutionary way to create humans.

dhw: So maybe – to fit in with part of your theory – he specially designed them because he was interested in specially designing things for his own interest. But how does this fit in with the theory that the ONLY thing your all-powerful, all-knowing God wanted to design was H. sapiens?

DAVID: In running the process of evolution and creating the econiches, God's interest is in providing appropriate designs at each stage. You are, as usual, suggesting interest for the sake of interest. Just more humanizing. Why not accept God as simply working purposefully? He does not require self-satisfaction, a characteristic of your humanizing suggestions.

At each stage of what? Certainly not each stage of creating humans, which you say was his sole purpose. Of course I accept that he has a purpose. If he is interested in providing designs for all kinds of life forms and econiches, that is a purpose in itself. And how do you know that he does not require self-satisfaction (you even offered the image of a painter enjoying his own paintings)? If God’s reasons are known only to him, what authority do you have for telling us that his reason for directly designing millions of extinct non-human life forms etc. was to produce H. sapiens, although you have no idea why he chose such a method.

dhw:I do not question the importance of the balance of nature for the survival of any species, including humans. I question your theory that for 3.X billion years your God had to design loads and loads of different ecosystems, the vast majority of which are extinct and had nothing whatever to do with humans, because although humans were his only purpose, for reasons you cannot even begin to fathom he had decided not to design them for 3.X billion years.

DAVID: (under “importance of ecosystems”): In dhw's confused state he does not seem to recognize the importance of balanced ecosystems:
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-recovery-sea-otter-populations-yields.html

Of course I recognize the importance of balanced ecosystems! You even reproduced my argument as quoted above, and then immediately ignored it! It is now bolded.

Under "intelligent design":
DAVID: Evolution is a system of taking from the past and repurposing in the future. It took 3.8 billion years to get from bacteria to humans.It is obvious the time was required.

All agreed, including the fact that it took 3.X billion years to get from bacteria to humans, and it is obvious that this was the time it took, because this was the time it took. How does that explain the disconnected theory bolded above?