Balance of nature: ecosystems are losing diversity (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, October 30, 2020, 08:50 (1485 days ago) @ David Turell

The absurd theory that God “designed the entire bush of life for our food supply” and every extinct life form was “part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans” is dealt with on the “error corrections" thread.

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.

Not answered.

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.

DAVID: 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??

If, as you believe, he designed every life form, the ogre-based spider and the extreme extremophiles (today’s natural wonders) are also here, so by your reasoning they are also your God’s goal. And if “extinct life has no role in present time”, obviously his purpose in designing every extinct species that ever lived could not have been to design us!

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.

You have accepted the logic of my alternatives, you have demolished your silly “humanizing” objection yourself (see “Theodicy”), I’m surprised that you think experimental scientists and inventors must be insecure, and ALL my theories involve a specific purpose, but the purpose does not have to be designing humans (see “error corrections” and “Theodicy”).

dhw: Only the experimenting theory suggests that he did not know how to achieve the purpose you impose on him. [...] My other alternatives also have him working on a specific 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 that allows him to learn instead of being omniscient.)

DAVID: 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.

What change? Another of your manufactured straw men. I have opposed your presentation of a God who designed a system that caused errors he couldn’t prevent or correct. My proposal is that the system he built (if he exists) is precisely the system he wanted to build. Which of those images is “weaker”?

DAVID: […] 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.

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. As regards survival, I have repeatedly proposed that changing local conditions may have necessitated new forms of behaviour by a local group of apes – just as pre-whales may have left the land because the water offered them a better chance of survival.

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.

DAVID: Again, you ignore God's right to first create life and evolve it following His purposes. […].

I do no such thing! Of course if he exists he had the right to create life and follow his purposes. That does not provide the slightest justification for the totally illogical theory bolded above.