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

by David Turell , Saturday, October 17, 2020, 17:06 (1496 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: This time, no straight answer. Previously you wrote: “Of course the brontosaurus is not directly connected to us. […] Each step has a bush of food supply for all. Each step is self-sufficient at the time of that step.” Evolution is NOT the history of a continuum of humans. It is the history of countless life forms branching out in different directions, and 99% of these led to extinction. If each step was self-sufficient and 99% died out, you have 1% surviving. What has survived has provided the food supply for humans, so why did your God directly design (your theory) all the life forms that went extinct? You have asked exactly the right question. When will you take ALL the history into account?

DAVID: I have taken all the history into account. Evolution is a process which included the brontosaurus, even if the brontosaurus has no direct relationship to us. The huge resulting bush is food supply. You keep suggesting a compressed process of creation by God. History tells us God chose to evolve us. Obvious conclusion from a belief in God.

dhw: Of course the brontosaurus is part of the history, and of course it has no direct relationship to us, and of course every individual bush throughout history has supplied food for the species that existed at the time, and if God exists and we believe in evolution, then of course he chose to “evolve” (which does NOT mean “directly design) every species that ever lived, including humans. You keep stating the blindingly obvious as if somehow it supported your belief that every single species and food supply that ever existed was “part of the goal of evolving humans”, even though 99% of them had nothing whatsoever to do with humans and “each step is self-sufficient at the time of that step”, and “extinct life plays no role in current time”. I do not suggest a “compressed process of creation”. I accept the history of evolution, and it simply doesn’t fit in with your theory that your God only wanted to design one species and its food supply.

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You keep forgetting we are discussing the fact that a very unusual species arrived at this point, which I think is the end of evolution. The bold is a gross distortion of my presented thinking. Yes, God decided, for some reasons known only to Him, to create humans. In choosing to evolve us from bacteria at the start of life, He knew everything that had to appear as He progressed with evolution. Humans were His goal, so it must be accepted God wanted to create all of the process of evolution and the final vast bush of life. That is a vastly different concept than your distorted bold above.

Under "Extinction of earlier forms":

dhw: I can't help wondering why your God would have designed all of these homos in the first place, if he only wanted to design H. sapiens. And did he deliberately change the environment in order to get rid of them? […]

DAVID: The Neanderthals supplied certain immunity to is. Denisovans gave high altitude genes. Perhaps we haven't discovered as yet other contributions from other forms.

dhw: Yes, you have your God directly designing all kinds of hominins and homos to give us all the changes between apes and humans. Brains and pelvises, bipedalling legs, flexible hands, high altitude genes, “certain immunity”. A little bit here, a little bit there...each one preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, or the result of yet another operation on a particular group until he finally gets the only homo he wants. Sounds like experimentation to me, or perhaps just a natural progression (using a perhaps God-given mechanism for adaptation and speciation) as changing conditions trigger the need for changing structures.

As usual you are proposing a God in partial control of the process. It all depends upon how one thinks about God's personality.