Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, July 08, 2020, 10:56 (1597 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: A great description of my viewpoint. No biological living system can be designed perfectly. That is the truth. I accept God, warts and all, as you view Him.

dhw: The question is what sort of God you accept. At one moment he is all-powerful, all-knowing and in total control.

DAVID: Have you noted God created life when none existed, and we cannot figure out how?

Yes indeed, and that’s your problem, because according to you this all-powerful, all-knowing, always-in-control being created from scratch a system….See next comment:
dhw: ….full of errors which he can’t control, trying to provide safeguards, and even then failing to do so. We’re not talking about a minor detail here. This is the whole of “living biology”, i.e. life itself.

DAVID: He put in as effective safeguards as He could. He foresaw the problems. Not his fault that high speed molecular reactions make mistakes.

Why do you feel you have to defend his inability to create a perfect system? Why can’t you consider the possibility that he WANTED it this way? You agreed with me that your God knows what he wants and produces it! See next comment:
dhw: If he knows what he wants and produces it, and what he produces is full of errors, then he must have wanted a product full of errors! And why do you think a God who deliberately creates the “errors” is more humanized than a God who does what he can (and sometimes fails) to make up for the errors in the system he has designed?

DAVID: Total distortion. God cannot control each protein molecule's actions.

Why is creating what he wants a distortion? Why do you assume that an all-powerful God’s powers are limited and he was forced to create something he didn’t want to create and tried – sometimes in vain – to rectify?

dhw: […] when I propose that he actually created the system he WANTED to create – because he did not want to create billions and billions of perfect life forms that would go on multiplying and diversifying but would never die – I am accused of “humanizing” him and making him act without a purpose.

DAVID: Your one lucid moment about recognizing death is builtin, which is not my issue about humanizing: you have Him experimenting and enjoying spectacles.

Experimenting would remove the discrepancy in your theory between God having only one purpose (us) but spending 3.X billion years directly designing anything but us. Your all-purposeful God must have had a reason for creating the great bush of life, including us, and it is perfectly possible that, as you put it yourself, he enjoys his work much as a painter enjoys his paintings. Of course we can only speculate, but as you so rightly assume, he probably has thought patterns similar to ours.

dhw: How can a “logical method of thought” be the same as ours if we can’t understand the logic?

DAVID: Adler uses our difference to prove God exists, and discusses our purposeful creation by evolution to cement His points.

But you have told us explicitly that he does not cover the above discrepancy. Please stop dodging the issue and trying to hide behind Adler, whose logic I do not dispute.

DAVID: We go 'round and 'round. Adler makes my theory logical. Our logic is similar to God's, the only thought pattern which is definitely similar. That is my only agreement with you. Logic is logic and it has rules.

We go round and round because you keep dodging the issue. The basic rule of logic as I understand it is that the premises of an argument should combine to form a pattern that makes sense to those engaged in the discussion. Here are all your premises. (Forget Adler – it’s your theory we are discussing.) Humans are unique and are so complex that they prove the existence of God. God’s one and only purpose was to create sapiens. God is all-powerful. God spent 3.X billion years directly designing every non-human life form, econiche etc. before directly designing our ancestors before directly designing us. Each premise is reasonable in itself. But put them together, and the following question arises: if your all-powerful God had only one purpose (us), why did he spend 3.X billion years NOT designing us but designing millions of now extinct, non-human life forms, econiches etc.? Your answer: no idea. Goodbye to logic. “Our logic is similar to God’s” = God has no idea either. If God exists, I reckon he would know what he wants and would do it. Hence all the logical alternatives I offer.