Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, August 14, 2020, 18:25 (1560 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I simply accept the history as a factual story of what God did while firmly accepting we were His purpose all along. I don't question any of it. You do.

dhw: I don’t question the history, which consists – as far as we know – of 3.8 billion years’ worth of ever changing life forms, ours being the latest. You do not “firmly accept” that we were his purpose all along. You firmly believe it. You cannot find any logical link between this belief and the higgledy-piggledy history of non-human life, and yet you reject all theories that either do establish a link or that provide different purposes, while still acknowledging the exceptional nature of H. sapiens.

DAVID: Your theories all describe a God whose personality I do not accept. I believe only in a purposeful God.

dhw: There is no link between your two sentences. If I believed in God, then of course he would be purposeful. None of my alternative theories leave him without a purpose! You are of course free to reject all of them – as you do – on the grounds that they entail human attributes, although you agree that he probably has human attributes.But your rejection will not in any way fill the gap of illogicality between an all-powerful God’s single purpose (H. sapiens and food supply) and his direct design of the higgledy-piggledy bush of millions of extinct life forms etc. which had nothing to do with his single purpose.

I've fully explained my version of why God conducted evolution as He did to produce us. Simply, one more repeat, God chose to evolve us. We were evolved, weren't we? Nothing illogical.

DAVID: Why startled at your usual distortion? You accept history above and then reject it. Talk about inconsistency!

dhw: Please explain why my bolded statement distorts your theory that “we were his purpose all along”. Where have I rejected history? It is your interpretation of history that I reject!

DAVID: I have my interpretation of God's history. You have yours. They will never agree as my God has a personality not at all similar to what you imagine God's personality is.

dhw: I wrote that you believed “from the very beginning the only life forms he wanted were H. sapiens and his food supply” and you accused me of distortion. What have I distorted? You wrote that I rejected history. How have I rejected history?

You call my version of evolutionary history run by God as illogical. It isn't. It assumes God is in charge of every event starting with the Big Bang and follows his purpose for creation.

DAVID: dhw's God is a humanized version of what I think about God. A God who can create the complex universe, evolve it, create the Milky Way, evolve it, create the Earth as the ideal planet for life, evolve it, create life, and evolve it, is a teleologically driven God. Not dhw 's mamby-pamby god.

dhw: This is all quite clear to me as totally logical, based on the God I imagine.

dhw: My God would also be teleologically driven, and I have explained how different purposes might lead to the history of life as we know it. There is nothing namby-pamby about a God experimenting, learning as he goes along, or designing life for the pleasure of creation, or because – as you have suggested – he wants to have a life form that will appreciate his work or even have a relationship with him. I can imagine any of these purposes as his driving force, and all of them can fit in with the history of life as we know it. But you won’t allow your imagined God to have any purpose beyond the creation of H. sapiens, and you won’t allow him to give organisms the freedom to design themselves and their own ways of surviving, and it is these restrictions imposed by you on your God which lead to the logical impasse bolded above.

You have not negated your humanized view of God. We don't know any of God's reasons for His actions. They are all guesses, but the bolded repeat of my suggested reason is one I can favor since God has consciousness and we are the only forms with it also.