Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, July 23, 2020, 08:28 (1582 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: But I suggest that if your God is all-powerful, he will do what he wants to do. You say he deliberately created the errors that lead to old people dying, but the errors that kill young people are not his fault (i.e. he didn’t want them).

DAVID: Confused. The bold does not correctly recognize that the mechanism of aging leading to death is purposely builtin and may or may not be due to error.

“The mechanism of aging leading to death is purposely built in” means that “He deliberately created the errors that lead to old people dying”! “Errors” here means things that go wrong. “The mechanism...may or may not be due to error” switches the focus to the intention of the maker. Well, if he purposely built in the errors, he must have intended to do so.

dhw: […] I find it absurd to argue that your all-powerful God could not correct some errors, but gave us the intelligence to do what he couldn’t do.

DAVID: The errors you want God to correct are all unexpected accidents of molecular activity which God could never control unless He somehow created a fail-safe system. That it isn't fail-safe proves it is impossible to create.

If they were unexpected, it means your once all-powerful and all-knowing God didn’t realize he was creating a defective system until…oops…he’d been and gone and done it! That it isn’t fail-safe therefore proves that your God was unable to do what he wanted to do, although amazingly H. sapiens is smarter than your God, because H. sapiens can actually correct some of the mistakes God couldn’t correct. And I’m accused of downgrading your God by “humanizing” him!
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DAVID: That still doesn't tell us His reasoning behind His purposes.

dhw: Your God’s purpose was to design H. sapiens (God hasn’t told us the reason why), and his purpose for designing all the extinct non-human life forms, econiches etc. was to feed H. sapiens, who had not yet arrived (God hasn’t told us the reason and you have no idea why he thought he needed to feed all the extinct non-human forms before he directly designed H. sapiens).

DAVID: Ridiculous comment. Feeding everyone during evolution is an obvious necessity.

dhw: Designing and feeding millions of now extinct non-human life forms is not an obvious necessity if his only intention was to design and feed humans! Stop dodging!

DAVID: No dodge. Your confusion. God has the right to evolve us and feed all organisms along the way.

Your God has the right to do whatever he wants to do. How does that explain the theory that he only wanted to “evolve” (= directly design) us, but spent 3.X billion years “evolving” (= specially designing) anything but us? Stop dodging.

DAVID: There can be only one definite theory only about God's thoughts: He uses logic as we do. The rest is guesswork.

dhw: What is a “definite” theory? If he uses logic as we do, we should be able to understand it. Not even you can understand the logic of the bold above, whereas you do recognize the logic of my alternatives.

DAVID: It is not an issue of understanding God's logic. We obviously cannot know His reasoning behind his choices of purpose or method of achieving them.

No, we cannot “know” any of this, including whether God actually exists. But how can you say he definitely uses logic as we do if you can’t explain what you insist are his choice of purpose and method? Maybe your theory about his choice of purpose and method is wrong. Maybe one or other of the theories (see below) that show he uses logic as we do has a better chance of being right.

dhw: I have offered you several logical explanations of the history: experimenting, getting new ideas as history progresses, designing for his own enjoyment, designing to relieve the boredom of eternal isolation – all of these in keeping with your own extremely serious observation that he probably has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours.

DAVID: The usual humanized version of how God thinks and develops purpose.

dhw: Fits in perfectly with your contention that your God probably has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours, “beyond just simple logical thought”.

DAVID: And it ends with the usual distortion of my view of God's thoughts.

dhw: Not a distortion but a direct quote, and a perfectly reasonable theory. When pressed for a possible explanation of your God’s purpose for creating H. sapiens, you even acknowledge that your God might want a relationship with us, might want us to admire his works, and might enjoy his own works as a painter enjoys his paintings.

DAVID: Exactly my thoughts as pure guesswork, when responding to your request to come up with possible reasons. Guesswork is not substantive thought, and I've stated those guesses were at the level of humanizing.

Why are my guesses less “substantive” than your guess, which defies all human logic? There is nothing wrong with “humanizing”, as you quite rightly pointed out in the statement which I keep quoting and which you keep trying to forget.