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

by dhw, Sunday, December 19, 2021, 13:01 (858 days ago) @ David Turell

PART TWO

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.

dhw: Please answer my questions.

DAVID: Your God invention is purely humanized and makes a real conception of God confused.

You still haven’t answered my questions.

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

dhw: 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: Nothing.

So please stop accusing me of misinterpreting your view of God.

dhw: 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)

DAVID: If God designed reality, as you accept, your question is patently illogical. The God I see dos not give out secondhand designing abilities requiring His mind.

You have distorted my comment. If God exists, I accept that he chose to EVOLVE reality, because I believe that life evolved! That does not mean he DESIGNED every life form etc., and why have you left out the second part of what I do not believe, which is that he “did so for the sole purpose of producing humans and their food”? My alternative proposal for the “reality” is a free-for-all, as opposed to your puppet show. I do not regard human free will as secondhand designing ability, and I propose that evolution itself depends on a similar autonomous, decision-making ability in cell communities other than our own, possibly designed by your God.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: You did not know ID never mentions God, except now in Meyer's book.

You named Behe, Meyer and Dembski as supporters of your illogical theory. On Thursday 16 December I replied: “I always thought that Behe specifically avoided mentioning God, let alone God’s purpose.” Dembski turned out to be the same. I knew nothing about Meyer, and I’m sorry, but his wonderful achievement in mentioning God has nothing to do with the fact that you cannot name a single scientist who supports your anthropocentric theory of evolution.

dhw: 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?

DAVID: There logically must be a powerful designing mind.

I accept the logic of the argument, just as I accept the logic of my question.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: So you conjure up an 'eternal mass of energy and matter' to do the complex designs. Can this mess think up the designs for reality? How? It still takes brilliant mentation. Something cannot appear without cause except a first cause. Something is eternal. Refute that point if you can. How did your magical rudiments of consciousness evolve themselves further? More magic? Totally illogical.

I do not conjure it up! Once more: “I find BOTH hypotheses equally difficult to believe.” I have not “refuted” the point that there has to be an eternal first cause! I have presented two possible first causes, each of which I find “equally difficult to believe”. Why do you find it so hard to understand or even take in the fact that I find two hypotheses equally difficult to believe? In answer to your questions: If your inferior consciousness must have been designed, how did your magical, all-powerful, all-knowing first-cause consciousness simply exist without being designed? Sheer magic? Totally illogical. But I am wrong one way or the other. Agnosticism is not a boast but a confession.