Clever Corvids: the cortical equivalent in many birds (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, October 02, 2020, 19:40 (1302 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: He wanted to design all of evolution, as history shows with humans as the endpoint. He understood the whole bush of life is necessary as a food supply for all. Especially with the ever rising size of the human population.

dhw: Why were 3.X billion years’ worth of food supplies for millions of now extinct organisms necessary in order to feed humans who had not yet appeared on the planet?

Now you propose God can't foresee the future?

DAVID: We both know no one can read the mind of God. Since He is capable of direct creation of the universe with the Big Bang, it seems He could have created humans directly, but we know He didn't.

dhw: And that is your problem. It is not unreasonable to assume that your God, if he exists, did what he WANTED to do. He didn’t directly create humans. So maybe he DID want to create humans, but didn’t know how to do it. Or maybe when he started the process of evolution, it was NOT because he wanted to create humans – but maybe he WANTED to create an ever changing bush of life.

You returned to your same mamby-pamby, experimenting with no future goal God.

DAVID (transferred from the “error” thread): Your thinking finally understands my theory. Of course He wanted all of the evolutionary stages on the way to humans, which are His final goal. The lack of understanding all these years shows your basic bias from the beginning. Your statement that He only wanted humans was your rigid misinterpretation of my thoughts all along.

dhw: But I keep asking you how the dodo and the dinosaur plus millions of extinct life forms can be called stages on the way to humans, in the sense that they were all “part of the goal of evolving humans”. You have consistently argued that your God’s purpose in creating life was to create H. sapiens. Sometimes you dilute this to “prime purpose” or “a goal” instead of “the” goal, and when asked what other goals there might be, you come up with none. I am proposing that the ever-changing great bush of life is what your God WANTED. And although I also propose that the bush is the result of him not wanting a predictable show (hence organisms having a free rein), your own belief that he specially designed every extinct non-human organism renders your anthropocentric theory even less likely.

You are still actively trying to twist an interpret action of my thoughts about God as an excuse for years of your confusion. I answered all your questions over and over in the same tone and fact. Evolving through all the stages of evolution, as history presents, to an accepted goal is a simple concept. That is all I have ever tried to present. Your so-called alternate goals interpret a God with a personality I do not accept. I'm still with Adler's interpretation.

DAVID: You rigidly can't make a choice when choices are obvious, and I rigidly stick to my choices all based on reasonable evidence. There is your word.

dhw: There is no “obvious” theistic choice, because as you rightly say, nobody can read your God’s mind. You rigidly stick to your one choice, and can't find any reason for it except that all the extinct life forms were necessary to feed humans who didn’t yet exist. “Reasonable evidence”?

There is a constellation of many facts covered in both my books which help describe God's actions and his probably purposeful personality. The bold is pure nonsense. Extinct life plays no role in current time. The huge bush of life is in present time for our huge population to use now. My God plans for future needs. You mind isn't following the continuity of His purposes. Again your bias, in my view.