Balance of nature: ecosystems are losing diversity (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, October 29, 2020, 18:22 (1485 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: At last. So please stop telling us that “God knew we would populate the Earth as He designed the entire bush of life for our food supply”. There is no connection!

So now God can't think and foresee the giant human population appearing!!! Haven't you noticed all my entries about the importance of the construction of ecosystems?

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

dhw: History does NOT show that God exists and that if he does, his goal was producing humans. (See “error corrections”.) History only shows that humans are the latest species. We may be the endpoint, but I would be unwilling to prophesy what species will exist on Earth in ten million years’ time. Please stop calling your opinions “factual”.

just my logical beliefs based on God's works

Your claim that every extinct non-human organism and food supply was directly designed as “part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans” has been demolished on the “errors correction” thread, ... I shall deal with each dodge in turn:

DAVID:…you deny God did anything related to evolution.

dhw: I do not. If he exists, he would have invented the mechanisms for life and 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 […]

dhw: You have correctly reproduced my alternative theistic explanations of evolution, the logic of which you have acknowledged, but I have never said God did it “all wrong”. The illogicality of the argument bolded above suggests that it is a flawed interpretation of your God’s intentions and/or methods. I am criticizing your interpretation, not God.

Not surprisingly you have agreed God, if existing ran evolution. And we are here. Doesn't that make us God's goal, even if you only feel it is currently??

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Only the experimenting theory suggests that he did not know how to achieve the purpose you impose on him. Even that does not make him “insecure”, unless you think that any inventor who is looking to create something new is “insecure”. My other alternatives also have him working on a specific purpose.

You make Him sound insecure by discussing experimentation by God. Now He has purpose?

DAVID: 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.

dhw: What personality difference? I have him knowing what he wants and getting it. (This even applies to the experiment theory, but this allows him to learn instead of being omniscient.)

You are denying your usual image of God in the past. Why the change now? And you are, IMHO, still making him weaker than I ever imagined from his works.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Dealt with over and over again. According to your reasoning, there is no reason for ANY multicellular organism to have appeared, since bacteria have always done just fine.

That is exactly the point of my thinking!!! Evolution could not have advanced beyond
bacteria without God pushing evolution, after their invention by God!!!

DAVID: 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.

dhw: We don’t know God’s reason for producing ANY organism, but that does not negate the possibility that he wanted ALL organisms to arrive. You do not “just accept his works”. You have built a whole theory concerning his “goal” and his methods, and you want us to swallow it whole by avoiding the question 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.

Again, you ignore God's right to first create life and evolve it following His purposes. Remember evolution over time has to create extinct forms as biological complexity is created.