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

by dhw, Saturday, December 18, 2021, 07:56 (860 days ago) @ David Turell

PART TWO

DAVID: Don't you understand the phrase: "the only one that will work" implies that is all there is to pick from. Nothing else will work.

dhw: I understand it. I just don’t believe that an all-powerful God is incapable of designing a system that doesn’t make errors, or that he is incapable of correcting some of the errors. And I propose that the system he designed was the system he WANTED to design.

DAVID: Once again, you do not accept the limitation in life's system design.

Of course I accept that the system keeps breaking down! But once again, I do not accept your theory that your all-powerful, all-knowing God is incapable of designing an error-free system, as well as being incapable of correcting many of its “errors”, and I would find it more logical that being all-powerful and all-knowing, he CHOSE to invent the system – not with errors, but with the freedom to diversify into what we consider to be the “good” and the “bad”.

DAVID: Invent the God you need to avoid a belief in God. Yours is illogically very human, not God-like.

dhw: How can a theory about an all-powerful God who knows exactly what he wants and proceeds to design it be an attempt to avoid a belief in God? Why is it more human for your God to design exactly what he wanted to design than for him to try – sometimes in vain – to correct the errors he could not avoid in the system he had designed?

DAVID: My concept of your humanized God is very weakly answered by trying to make my God human.

Please answer my questions.

DAVID: You can't read my mind as to how I view Him. I tell you and you purposely misinterpret.

You have said explicitly that your God “had to” design the system this way as no other system was possible, and you have said explicitly that he took measures to correct some of the errors, but he could not correct them all. What have I misinterpreted?

DAVID: Your constantly repeated illogical negative mantra fills space and reminds me of Joe Goebel's belief. Repeating a lie often enough becomes the truth.

dhw: I'm sorry but there are no lies here. Your mantra is the illogical premise I have questioned in bold and for which you admit you can find no logical explanation. I have proposed alternative scenarios which you agree are logical. There is no “lying”.

DAVID: Again your fully distorted 'no logical explanation' meaningless response. I cannot know why God chose to evolve all of reality, as history tells us. Stop dodging.

I do not question your belief that God – if he exists – chose to evolve all of reality, because I too believe that evolution happened. I only question your rigid belief that he specially designed every life form, natural wonder etc. (he could equally have chosen to give them the means of designing themselves) for the sole purpose of designing humans plus food although the vast majority of his designs had no connection with humans plus food. You always dodge the illogicality by leaving out one or other of these basic, conflicting premises.

DAVID: […] In the other thread you have shown you have no idea of ID's philosophic approach to purposely not using any sniff of religion or God in how they present design as a sole argument.

dhw: See the other thread for your usual avoidance of the question I asked.

DAVID: The other thread explains how ID works, since you have limited your reading to areas that support your agnosticism. If you accept the design argument, why/how can you possibly have other reasons for disbelief? A 'required designer' MUST, therefore, exist.

I know how ID works, and I have said over and over again that I accept the logic of ID: i.e. I accept that life is too complex to have arisen by chance, and if we believe in design, we should believe there is a designer. But I have also said again and again that if we accept the idea that life and consciousness are too complex NOT to have been designed, how can we possibly believe that there is a form of life and consciousness infinitely more powerful than our own which was NOT designed? The philosophical/theological cop-out is the idea of “first cause”, but that does not answer the question. We might just as well believe in an eternal, impersonal mass of energy and matter which eventually produced the conditions for life and the rudiments of consciousness, which then evolved into all their complexities, as believe in a know-it-all mind that has always simply been there, without a source. I find BOTH hypotheses equally difficult to believe, as I have explained over and over again, and that is why I remain agnostic.