Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 16, 2020, 11:40 (1619 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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: It is not silly. We have totally different version of God's personality. Your god clearly pursues human thinking.

I offer different versions. You offer only one, which leads to the illogicality of the bolded theory above. Since we cannot know your God’s personality, how can we exclude the possibility that the creator has certain thought patterns that are similar to those of his creation? You said the same yourself, though now you wish you hadn’t!

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.

dhw: 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”.

DAVID: They are.

You were complaining that I didn’t accept humans as God’s prime purpose. I have given you two explanations which DO accept this premise. More dodging!

dhw: 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.

DAVID: My same old answer: God is in charge of the creation of reality. Evolution produced humans, the most unexpected, unusual result as outlined by Adler.

Fine. But you keep telling us that H. sapiens was his one and only purpose, so why did he spend 3.X billion years designing anything but the only thing he wanted to design?

dhw: 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).

DAVID: All humanizing hypotheses. My God knows exactly what He is doing. No need to learn or experiment.

A) How do you know? B) Why can't you answer my question?

dhw: Please, either find a logical connection or admit (once more) that there isn't one, and then we can stop going round in circles.

DAVID: My God is not your god. That is why the argument is in circles. We are not arguing about the same God. My God has the right to chose to evolve humans from bacteria. Not 'inexplicable' because I have no need to explain it. It is your problem, not mine.

You know very well that it is not a question of God’s rights but of finding a coherent explanation for the history of evolution. But you are right. I have asked you to provide a link between your different fixed beliefs. You clearly cannot do so, but there is no need for you to answer. I simply shouldn’t question your fixed beliefs.