Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, June 15, 2020, 11:26 (1620 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Of course there is no absolute proof God did anything. But it is my belief He created reality and everything I explain follows logically from that. […]

dhw: And so you continue to dodge: God created reality, his sole purpose was to create H. sapiens and apparently it follows logically that he directly designed 3.X billion years’ worth of non-human life forms and econiches etc. before directly designing various humans before directly designing H. sapiens. And you think this is a logical sequence.

DAVID: It is totally logical if you accept that a God-in-charge allows the conclusion that since evolution occurred He close to run all of it until humans appeared. You just never accept that He 'chose' to do it the way we see.

dhw: I accept totally that if God exists, he would have chosen what we see: millions and millions of life forms, econiches, lifestyles, natural wonders coming and going for millions and millions of years, and eventually different forms of humans ultimately leading to one species of human. That does not explain why, if he is all-powerful and had only one purpose from the very beginning (H. sapiens), he would have directly designed all those extinct life forms etc. that had nothing to do with humans. So maybe H. sapiens was not his only purpose from the beginning, or maybe if H. sapiens was his purpose from the beginning, everything that preceded humans was part of a great experiment, or maybe the idea for humans only came late on in his thinking.

DAVID: All you have done again is assume humanizing views of what God might have been thinking as He employed evolution to create what He wanted to create.

Do please drop this silly objection to any theory that “humanizes” God. Nobody knows God’s thoughts, but there is no reason to oppose your own suggestion that he probably has thought patterns similar to our own.

DAVID: In the bold you directly contradict the beginning of your paragraph, in that you don't accept humans as his prime purpose. Fine. On that we will continuously disagree, as I accept Adler's detailed arguments and you refuse to consider them.

As usual, you dodge the fact that I have offered you two possible explanations of evolution in which God’s prime purpose IS humans. But as above, you reject these as “humanizing”.

dhw: [..]I propose a variety of explanations for the variety of organisms that preceded H. sapiens. You have accepted that all of them are logical, but you are unable to find any connection between the vast variety of pre-human organisms plus their econiches and your proposal that he only wanted one plus its econiches.

DAVID: This fully humanizing discussion of your version of God does not recognize the whole of history. It dwells insufficiently by concentrating solely on life's evolution. Let's start in the beginning. What is your version of why God created the universe? Purpose present or not? Just experimenting? Does He know what He is about? I fully expect your usual humanized unpurposed God.

And yet again you try to dodge the issue of the disconnection in your theory of evolution! Your questions have been answered umpteen times. If God exists, then of course he had a purpose for creating the universe and life. We are in agreement. Our only disagreement concerns what his purpose was, and how he fulfilled it, so of course we focus on life’s evolution! For some reason, you limit his purpose to the creation of H. sapiens, but you refuse to tell us what was his purpose in creating H. sapiens. And you cannot tell us why, if his only purpose was H. sapiens, he directly created 3.X billion years’ worth of non-humans etc. I offer you various hypotheses – all of which you recognize as logical – which allow for H. sapiens as a prime purpose, or which offer a different purpose, or which offer different interpretations of God’s powers (maybe he experiments, maybe he learns). But you cling to the only hypothesis which you yourself find inexplicable: that an all-powerful God with a single purpose (H. sapiens) directly designs millions of extinct non-human life forms, econiches, natural wonders etc. before directly designing various non-sapiens before directly designing sapiens, the only thing he wanted to design (apart from sapiens’ econiches). Please, either find a logical connection or admit (once more) that there isn't one, and then we can stop going round in circles.