Let's study ID (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, August 07, 2021, 12:31 (990 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'm sorry, but please understand, I've answered fully to my satisfaction, if not yours. Your problem is the issue of humans as a main goal or purpose. Adler wrote a whole book taken from his talks on the subject, and is/was accepted by hoards of believers, one of whom gave me the book as a gift. So to repeat, it is your problem, not mine. And not worth answering further, as no progress can be made to make you see that interpretation from the facts.

dhw: You simply WILL not face up to "my" problem. First of all, you do not say that humans are “a main goal or purpose”. You consistently tell us that humans are THE goal, as in your statement that all life forms were/are “part of the goal of evolving [= designing] humans” plus their food. Secondly, yet again, you persist in leaving out your belief that your God individually designed every life form and food supply that ever existed, and so “my problem” is why would he specially design all those life forms and food supplies that had no connection with humans if his one and only goal was to design humans and their food supply?

DAVID: I've faced your problem and find your reasoning totally confused. Let's try once again. God, in charge of creating our reality wished to have humans exist. He chose to evolve them by designing many increasingly complex stages from Archaea to humans. That is a completely satisfactory answer to your bolded question. God is allowed, as you have admitted previously, to chose any method He wishes to create us. That theory is exactly what history tells us.

This is getting beyond a joke. According to you, your God chose to design all the increasingly complex stages from Archaea to every single life form that ever existed, and the vast majority of these had no connection with humans and their food, although humans and their food were his one and only purpose. You refuse to answer the bolded question, because – as you have admitted in the past – you have no idea why he would fulfil his one and only goal by designing life forms and foods that had no connection with that one and only goal.

dhw: You also reject even those theories in which I do give humans a special place (experimenting/new ideas), because although you find the theories totally logical, they do not conform to your personal image of how God thinks and acts.

DAVID: I fully reject your vision of the God you imagine.

There are different visions (a God who experiments, learns, gets new ideas, or creates a free-for-all), each of which you agree logically explains the existence of the whole bush, but does not conform to your vision of an all-powerful, all-knowing God who for some unknown reason fulfils his one and only purpose (humans plus food) by specially designing vast numbers of life forms and foods that have no connection with humans and their food.

Haldane’s dilemma
DAVID: This cement-headed Darwinist is insanely confused. He doesn't recognize Haldane's timing dilemma. He thinks a random beneficial mutation can simply appear and every design will be just fine in the time allotted. What he does recognize is death, and I might add extinctions, as a high important part of the process of evolution from simple to complex. dhw doesn't seem to understand all those necessary extinctions led to humans.

You and I have long since turned our backs on random mutations, and your God theory and
Shapiro’s theory of cellular intelligence both make the time scale irrelevant. Your final comment is plain silly. If your all-powerful God’s one and only purpose was to design humans and their food, there would have no need for him in the first place to individually design and then kill off all the life forms that had no connection with humans. You simply go on and on dodging the logical absurdity of your theory.

DAVID: You are still totally muddled about God's use of an evolutionary process to finally form humans by His design.

The muddle is entirely yours, since your version of God uses an evolutionary process to design countless extinct life forms and foods that have no connection with the only life forms and foods he wants to design.

DAVID: Your muddle is you admit seeing design, and deny the need for a designing mind. Design requires a designer.

The final absurdity, since every single one of the alternative theories I have proposed includes your designer. Please stop dodging and distorting. This whole discussion can end if you simply repeat what you have told us in earlier posts: you have no idea why your God would choose the method you believe in (specially designing every single life form plus food) in order to fulfil the one and only goal you believe in (to specially design one life form plus food).