Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, July 20, 2020, 12:17 (1585 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Failures of molecule function never designed. As shown by many backup correction mechanisms.

dhw: So what were you referring to with your now bolded “very carefully designed”?

DAVID: Obviously the backup systems.

But you wrote: “My bold is God’s recognition of probable molecular failures. Definitely not intended or planned by God on purpose. Very carefully designed.” This can only refer to the failures, so perhaps you will understand why your logic is sometimes so hard to follow.

Under “Aging is built in”:
DAVID: Aging is a planned designed part of living. It has to be present to clear away room for coming generations. God plans well. Now certainly some deaths are mistakes, but the general intended path is from birth to death.

dhw: No one would dispute that ageing is part of the process from birth to death. But I don’t see how mistakes leading to millions of premature deaths constitute good planning.

DAVID: Totally unreasonable. God cannot prevent molecular mistakes

You offer us an all-powerful God with a helpless inability to control his own invention, although amazingly we smart human beings are able to correct some of the mistakes he could not avoid. And once again, I don’t see how millions of mistaken premature deaths from the same diseases that kill old people can be called good planning.

dhw: Your “humanizing” objection to my logical alternatives is invalidated by your agreement that your God probably has thought patterns similar to ours...

DAVID: In use of logic only!! We do not know His reasons for his purposes. Still distorting!!

At this point I quoted your agreement that your God probably has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours and “beyond just simple logical thought”. I can understand your reluctance to continue the discussion on “humanizing”, and to switch to wordplay. Perhaps you will also understand that I should not be accused of distortion when I quote your own words.

dhw: Purposes ARE reasons!

DAVID: Not logical. There are always reasons behind purposes!! Not according to two thesaurus' I reviewed. There is conceptual thoughts that lead to purpose. I covered reason. motive and purpose, but even motive implies thought beforehand.

You claim that your God’s only reason or purpose for creating life was to create H. sapiens, and his reason or purpose for spending 3.X billion years creating millions of non-human life forms etc. was to provide food for humans who did not yet exist. Dictionary definitions: “Purpose: the reason for which anything is done, created or exists” (Encarta) “The purpose of something is the reason for which it is made or done” (Collins) Please stop playing with words and deal with the issues themselves.

DAVID: […] what is wrong with it taking all the time it took?

dhw: What is wrong is not the time it took but your claim that although the only life forms he wanted to evolve were us and our food supplies, he chose to “evolve” (by which you mean directly design) 3.X billion years’ worth of non-human life forms etc. in order to feed humans who did not even exist.

DAVID: Again a gross distortion in bold. To produce us by evolving us, He knew and understood full well everything else had to come first. God can think realistically, but you don't seem to. We were a goal to be reached starting with bacteria, God's reasons for that method unknown […]

dhw: Why did “everything else” HAVE to come first? Your answer: “reason unknown”! I have offered you alternative, logical reasons why everything DID come first. Only your explanation defies logic, so maybe it’s wrong! And what you have pointed out is not a distortion, since yet again you insist that “we were a goal to be reached”. (You’ve once more changed “the” goal to “a” goal, though you’ve never named any other goal.)

DAVID: Having a prime goal is not a mistaken view of God. From the Big Bang on, I view it as easy to see God's purposive actions. That is my position, whether it is 'a' or 'prime'.

I did not say that God did not have a prime goal, and the distinction is not between ‘a’ and ‘prime’ but between ‘a’ and ‘the’. You play similar games on the other thread with “the prime endpoint”. This whole dispute concerns the question why, if his only purpose was to create H. sapiens, he spent 3.X billion years directly designing anything but H. sapiens in order to provide food for humans who only appeared after 99% of the other life forms and food supplies had disappeared. You have several times said that you have “no idea”. That is an agreement that you find your own theory illogical. However, if your God had other goals or secondary purposes, we might be able to find a more logical explanation of evolution, so please tell us what you think the other or secondary purposes might have been.