Return to David's theory of evolution PART TWO (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, December 16, 2021, 11:22 (1071 days ago) @ David Turell

PART TWO
dhw: Why are you so opposed to the idea that your all-powerful God might have WANTED the existing system with its so-called “errors” instead of “having to” (you have used those words before) design it that way?

DAVID: My God had to have this system of life as the only one that will work at the speeds necessary.

There you are: he “had to”. Your all-powerful, all-knowing God was compelled by conditions of his own making to create a system with errors which he did not want, and tried – often unsuccessfully – to correct.

DAVID: So, yes, this is what He wanted. But not from the weak humanized God you always imply. I repeat, we see very different Gods in characterizing God's personality.

It is you who make him weak! I propose that his powers (if he exists) are unlimited, and the system with its capacity for all life forms from molecules upwards to do their own thing was what he WANTED to create, and not what he “had to” create.

DAVID: Creating the underlying basic living process came first, then the design of new forms, some as in the Cambrian completely new. Other partial new design as adaptations of old ones. All God's choice at the time.

dhw: Alternatively, he created the mechanism whereby these forms were able to design themselves.

DAVID: Back we go to a weak, humanized God who hands off a major part of His job.

dhw: How do you know what his “job” was? It’s you who insist that his job was to design humans plus food! And why is it “weak” to create autonomous life? And why is your all-powerful though not all-powerful (see above re errors) puppet master or control freak less human than my laissez-faire creator?

DAVID: Why should He be at all like any human you know?

dhw: […] I find it totally logical that if God exists as first cause, whatever he creates will reflect some aspect of himself, since it never existed until he thought of it. Do you really think your God has no idea what it means to love, hate, enjoy, be bored, be sad, be happy? Are we that much more advanced than he is? If he exists.

DAVID: We see very different Gods. Of course He knows all of our emotions.

Then we see the same God, since if he exists, according to you only he could have created them!

DAVID: Same problem: God is so advanced you completely misunderstand the concept of God. He knows all we know and so much more. It doesn't take 'enlightenment' to know we mimic Him slightly. Your imagined humanized God I see as Him mimicking us!

dhw: I am not disputing the fact that if a being can create universes and life itself, he must know much more than we know! Thank you for yet again agreeing that we “mimic” him. I have no idea what “slightly” means in this context, since you have avoided answering my question directly. You can only mimic something that already exists, and so it is totally absurd to imagine that God mimicked us when he created us!

DAVID: Since God is so powerful, our mimicking can only be in a small degree.

Yes, yes, we are minuscule compared to his almightiness. But that still leaves plenty of room for him to want a free-for-all, or to experiment, or to have new ideas as he goes along, and above all in the context of our discussion, it leaves plenty of room for him to act logically and, if he has a single purpose, to fulfil it without all the diversions you impose on him (i.e. God’s only purpose was to design H. sapiens plus food, and therefore he designed the brontosaurus and the weaverbird’s nest, neither of which had/has any connection to humans.)