Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, August 16, 2020, 08:54 (1558 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Simply one more repeat: The question which you have, as always, omitted and cannot answer is why, if his ONLY purpose was to evolve (in your language = directly design) us and our food supply, he first evolved (= designed) millions of non-human life forms and their food supplies which had nothing to do with us. Your failure to answer this question, together with your rejection of any other theistic explanation of life’s history and your God’s possible purpose(s) and method(s), is what causes this discussion to go on and on and on.

DAVID: I've answered it over and over. God CHOSE to evolve us from bacteria as history shows. You won't accept that theory. I don't understand your discomfort. If He evolved us, your bold makes no sense, because it is a perfect description of evolution, and therefore has everything to do with us.

Over and over you skip the fact that according to your theory, your God also CHOSE to evolve every other life form from bacteria, and "evolve" for you means to directly design. Therefore he directly designed millions of now extinct, non-human life forms which have no conceivable link to the one life form he set out to design. Later in this post, though, you have repeated the only answer you can think of:

DAVID: He chose to evolve us, and the econiches are the necessary food supply for an enormous number of species and humans. Your illogical suggestion always implies God should directly create us. How about the necessary bush?

The bush necessary for what? How could 3.X billion years’ worth of now extinct econiches and species have provided the necessary food supply for humans who did not yet exist? At least the biblical version of direct creation lends unequivocal support to your theory that we were your God’s goal and he knew exactly what he was doing. Your theory, however, tries to combine the biblical purpose with what we both believe to be the historical fact of evolution, with its vast bush of life forms irrelevant to humans and our food supply. The two theories simply don’t go together.

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.

DAVID: Your view of God's personality and His degree of purposeful activity is not my view of who He is. It never will be because what you offer is an indecisive God, not sure of where He is headed.

There is absolutely nothing indecisive about the view of God that I offer. All my alternative theories propose a particular goal and a straightforward pursuit of that goal. If I believed in God, I would find it impossible to believe that he did not have a purpose in creating life, and that he would not pursue that purpose directly. But among many options, I include the possibility that he wished to invent something he would enjoy, or might learn from, or might relate to, or might be surprised by. I do not believe that he would start out with a single purpose and then devote all his attention to designing things irrelevant to his single purpose. Nor do I believe that he would rely on random errors to help him design a single species (plus its food supply).