Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, August 02, 2020, 07:58 (1366 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You have yet again avoided the question. We are not talking about the time or about ID! We are talking about all the extinct non-human life forms your God directly designed – the great bush of life, 99% of which has disappeared – although the only life forms he wanted to design were H. sapiens and his food supply. Please stop dodging.

DAVID: I don't dodge. I find your complaint about 99% gone as simply not recognizing history as God produced it. It implies I should favor Genesis and six days of creation. I don't.

Who said anything about Genesis and six days of creation? You know perfectly well that all my alternative theistic explanations of evolution have nothing to do with Genesis. Stop dodging. My complaint is not about 99% gone but about the utter illogicality of an all-powerful God with one purpose devoting himself to directly designing anything but the life form which was his one purpose. Stop dodging.

DAVID: And I won't stop quoting ID which influences my basic thoughts about the necessity for God as the active agent, and makes Darwin theory superfluous. Mutation rates as studied actually show that the time evolution actually took, 3.8 by, is not nearly time enough for natural accidental mutations to produce us. I don't dodge. I follow reasoning you do not accept.

None of the above has anything whatsoever to do with the question of why your all-powerful God with only one purpose would have devoted himself to directly designing anything but the life form which was his one purpose. Stop dodging.

dhw: …. you continually gloss over the illogicality of your theory. If his only purpose was H. sapiens plus food supply, why did he directly design all the non-human stages of complexity and their food supplies? Why not a direct line from bacteria through to humans instead of the vast bush?

DAVID: Yes, the bush supplies the food for all. It also represents the many stages of evolution from simple to complex. Please describe your concept of 'direct line'.

The bush supplied food for all the life forms that had nothing to do with humans, which is the reason for my asking why a God with only one purpose etc etc. As regards the ‘direct line’, since we both believe in common descent, we both believe there has to be one, but I can no more describe it than you can. My point is that the history of evolution does NOT consist of a straight line but a vast bush of lines, which does not fit in with the concept of a God who ONLY wants to “evolve” (= directly design) one species – plus its food.

DAVID: God has the right to choose His preferred method. I don't try to guess His reasonings.

dhw: But this is all YOUR reasoning: you say he had only one purpose, and in order to achieve that one purpose, he deliberately devoted his attention to designing life forms that had nothing to do with his purpose. This is not logical. I offer you alternative, theistic explanations of life’s history which you agree are logical but which you dismiss as “humanizing” while agreeing that your God probably has human attributes. Again illogical.

DAVID: Not logical to you. Perfectly logical to believers.
It is your series of illogical thoughts that lead you to complain about my well thought out theories.

I wonder how many believers believe that your God could but couldn’t control the errors in his system, that he designed tyrannosaurus and its food supply in order to feed humans who weren’t yet there, and that he probably has attributes similar to ours but we shouldn’t take seriously any theory that endows him with attributes similar to ours because he doesn’t have attributes similar to ours.