Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, September 11, 2020, 21:39 (1532 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Same again. Just ONE premise, leaving out his all-powerfulness, and the claim that he also directly designed millions of other non-human life forms that had nothing to do with us, although we were his one and only purpose. Please stop dodging.

DAVID: No dodge except by you. All-powerful means He has the right to create history any way "He wishes. And we have the history.

dhw: Of course he has the right. But that does not mean your interpretation of the history is correct. All-powerful means that if his one and only purpose was to directly design (your definition of evolution) H. sapiens plus food supply, it makes no sense for him to have directly designed millions of now extinct non-human life forms and their food supplies before doing the only thing he wanted to do. History includes the vast pre-human bush. Possible explanations to eliminate this incongruity: maybe God is not all-powerful (I should add all-knowing, to encompass the hypotheses that he was experimenting or had new ideas as he went along), maybe he didn’t directly design all the life forms, maybe H. sapiens was not his one and only purpose.

DAVID: Same old complaint, again trying to ignore the history of what God created. I am convinced of His purpose to produce humans. You are not. We differ.

It is you who ignore the history! It is not illogical in itself to propose that humans were his only purpose, but if humans were his one and only purpose and he had the power to do whatever he wanted, why did he directly design all the now extinct life forms and food supplies that had nothing to do with humans? You focus on one premise, and you try to ignore the other premises in your theory.

DAVID: I've left out nothing of God's creation of history. God is the creator

dhw: You’ve left out why he specially designed the dodder plant plus millions and millions of no longer existing life forms and natural wonders if his only purpose was to to specially design H. sapiens.

DAVID: You've again ignored the web of the huge ecosystem of food supply needed.

dhw: You’ve again ignored the millions of ecosystems that preceded the ecosystem that supplied food for humans. And we still don’t know why the specially designed dodder plant was necessary for the evolution and/or food supply of H. sapiens.

Why raise an issue I've answered over and over. Ecosystems are needed at all times to supply food. They are highly complex and animal systems must have established top predators. Plants have their own necessary complex parts.

dhw: Our difference is that you refuse to recognize the illogicality of your combined premises, and while acknowledging the logic of various alternative, theistic explanations of evolution, you reject them on the illogical grounds that they “humanize” God although you agree that he probably has thought patterns, emotions and other attributes similar to ours. You have a fixed belief, and no amount of reasoning will make you reconsider. So perhaps we should just leave it at that.

DAVID: Fine.

dhw: I hope so!

We'll be silent and apart.