David's theory of evolution: God's error corrections II (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, October 07, 2020, 16:23 (1506 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The issue is whether God exists OR not. I am convinced He exists, and my view of His actions is a logical view. It is when you tell me my view is illogical that my hackles rise.

The last thing I want to do is raise your hackles, but the issue when we are discussing evolution is NOT whether God exists or not. I am an agnostic, and because we are trying to understand how evolution works (Chapter 2 in the history of life), I am discussing the subject – as indeed did Darwin – without casting doubt on God’s existence. I have absolutely no dispute with the logic of your argument for his existence, so do please lower your hackles.

DAVID: And we get back to discussing your view of God, from outside belief, which has to skew your thinking as your grudgingly try Him on for size. You do not think about Him as I do, give Him a similar personality.

dhw: The moment you start trying to find God’s purpose, it is inevitable that you end up giving him personal attributes, but NOBODY knows his purpose or his attributes, so we study his works in order to extrapolate possibilities. There is nothing illogical in the belief that the supremacy of the human mind could indicate that we are the endpoint, and were God’s purpose, or one of his purposes. There is nothing illogical in the belief that God is all-powerful. There is nothing illogical in the belief that God directly designed every life form, econiche, natural wonder etc, in the history of life. But what IS illogical is the claim that an all-powerful God whose one and only purpose was to design H. sapiens, and who “could have created humans directly” but didn’t, must have designed the rest as “part of the goal of evolving [=directly designing] humans”, and supplying food for humans, although humans didn’t appear until 3.X billion years after 99% of his designs had disappeared. Once more: it is the COMBINATION of your premises that makes your theory illogical.

Once again you look at history and then tell me it is illogical, when we both agree God creates history. What we see is the mechanism God chose to create humans. We happen to be here. God obviously chose to create humans, and we appeared by evolution. Simple logic that you persist in muddling up, by trying to give God humanizing thoughts. God is a person like no other person. I give His personality purpose and nothing more for that reason. That is a reasonable limit to imagining His person thoughts. But you blast off in all directions giving Him all sorts of imagined reasons and purposes.

DAVID: They are all part of God's pattern of evolution over 3.8 billion years. Ecosystems all have their own needs and structures. And God is always capable of designing big and little.

dhw: I agree. Nothing whatsoever to do with all of them being “part of the goal of evolving humans”.

DAVID: I disagree here.

dhw: And yet you have no idea why your all-powerful God chose to evolve [= directly design] humans, his one and only goal, by first evolving [= directly designing] the vast bush of extinct life “which plays no role in current time.”

Discussed with clarity above. Adler's point and mine is we are so unusual it points to the conclusion God fully intended to create us and history says by evolution. Again you toy with the idea of direct creation in your reasoning. It didn't happen and is not at issue. Your take is so strange to me we will never find common ground for this discussion. No one knows just how all-powerful God might be. It is important to avoid Bible descriptions at the start. I have established for me there is a designer as a starting point and building from that view I develop a viewpoint about God, just a name for the designer.