Balance of nature: ecosystems are losing diversity (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, October 28, 2020, 17:55 (1275 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: delivers the same constant message. The huge bush must maintain its ecosystems and the inherent diversity or humans will suffer. God knew what He was doing setting up the current system, knowing how large a population of humans would eventually appear. It seems dhw doesn't view t his in the same way I do.

dhw: Which huge bush?

Obviously the current bush!!!

dhw: You have said explicitly that “extinct life plays no role in current time”. There is no connection between past ecosystems and our current system!

An obvious of course not!!

dhw: That is one of the points at issue between us when you tell us that your God designed every extinct life form and ecosystem as “part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans”. But I totally agree that humans will suffer from the loss of diversity in the current bush of ecosystems.

I hold that God ran/designed/conducted the process of evolution with the goal and endpoint of producing humans, just as history factually shows.

DAVID: If God started with bacteria, and He did, He had to know where He was going and what He needed to create while on the way to achieving a completeness of his creation of self-sustaining living organisms.

dhw: What do you mean by a “completeness of his creation of self-sustaining organisms”? If God exists, then of course he knew that all self-sustaining living organisms would need food. How does that come to mean that all self-sustaining living organisms were “part of the goal of evolving (= directly designing] humans”? It doesn’t even mean that your God directly designed every species and natural wonder himself. If he designed cellular intelligence with a view to allowing a free-for-all, he would also have known that self-sustaining living organisms require food!

That kind of agrees with me in a round about way, while you deny God did anything related to evolution.

DAVID: All dhw sees is a God experimenting, creating spectacles, looking for interesting organisms, and then if He wanted humans as an endpoint, He seems to have done it all wrong, inventing things not needed and taking too long, like stopping to make dinosaurs along the way, all the while using the same DNA code control for everyone. God uses a better code than any we ever devised. A very smart purposeful God.

dhw: If God exists, then of course he is smart and purposeful, and since we can’t invent life or evolution, of course his code is way ahead of anything we can devise. The first part of your statement is the usual desperate attempt to divert attention away from the illogicality of your theory. Firstly you attack my own alternatives, every one of which you have agreed fits in logically with life’s history, but secondly at no stage have I ever suggested that your God did things all wrong! It is your interpretation of his purpose and method that makes no sense, and that is why you continually dodge the issue of why your all-powerful God, whose one and only purpose was to directly design H. sapiens, would have spent 3.X billion years designing millions of other non-human, now extinct life forms and natural wonders which you admit had no direct connection to humans! You have no idea why. This does not mean I am criticizing God. It means that if you can’t find a reason, maybe your theory is wrong: maybe designing H. sapiens was NOT his one and only purpose; maybe he designed all those other millions of life forms because he wanted to; maybe he was experimenting; maybe he loves designing and does so in order to create interesting things for himself to watch (after all, you yourself are sure that he watches with interest). You do not strengthen your defence of your theory by attacking my alternatives or by pretending that I am criticizing your God when you know very well that I am criticizing your interpretation of his motives and methods.

Your long illogical set of humanizing theories offering a God who is not sure of what to do, but they fit reality if one accepts your type of insecure God not working on a specific purpose of creating a very superior form of organism, the only one which can recognize His plausible existence. Your presentation is a totally critical discussion of the God I envision. You ignore the personality difference I've continuously pointed out in your God and my God. That is the key to our difference. It all goes back to Adler's arguments, as far as I am concerned and our totally unexplained arrival. Assuming evolution changes organisms to improve survival, there is no reason for our appearance of survival. The apes, our direct ancestors, did just fine until we overpopulated their areas. Finally to answer the bold, I don't know God's reasoning, nor do you, for producing us, but does not negate He wanted our arrival. We are here. Why should I have to find a reason??? I just accept His works.