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

by dhw, Sunday, January 02, 2022, 11:17 (838 days ago) @ David Turell

PART ONE

DAVID: I feel the designing God innovates new species.

dhw: Yes, I know. You also feel that he specially designed every single one for the sole purpose of designing sapiens plus his food, but since the vast majority of extinct life forms had no connection with sapiens and his food, your feelings clash violently with your reason, which is why you constantly dodge the issue. Later in your post, you answer this criticism:

DAVID: Same contortion. God chose to create humans by stepwise design that is a form of evolution as we view the history of our arrival.

dhw: There is no contortion. I am not denying that humans evolved in steps! I am asking why an all-powerful God with only one purpose (to design sapiens plus food) would design countless other life forms that had no connection with humans, and why – since you believe him to be capable of designing species without predecessors – he would have chosen NOT to design us in the same way.

DAVID: Why do you disallow an all-powerful God the right to chose His preferred method of creation? Why can't you recognize God has the right to choose? Imagine seven plus billions of us and no bush of evolved life?

Of course if he exists, he has the right to choose. And what he chose was to evolve the huge bush of life, including countless life forms that had no connection with humans! Why can’t you recognize that he had the right to choose a free-for-all, or to experiment with a particular goal in mind, or to experiment just to see where his ideas would lead him? What you do not seem to be able to recognize is that your anthropocentric interpretation of evolution fails to explain the vast majority of your God’s actions!

dhw: Hence the different alternatives that I have proposed (a free-for-all, experimentation as he pursues his goal, or experimentation that brings new ideas as it proceeds). You try to dismiss all these on the feeble grounds that they “humanize” God, although you have admitted repeatedly that he we probably have attributes in common with him, and we mimic him in certain ways.

DAVID: My thoughts about our similarities with God's personality do not mean your weak God you imagined is acceptable to me.

You still haven’t explained why a God who designs precisely what he wants is “weak” compared to a God who “has to” design a system that results in errors he does not want and can’t control. (See “Cellular intelligence”.)

dhw: […] Do you think your God kept popping in every few million years to make major adjustments to the less than perfect leggy-flippers he started off with because in future, life and movement in the water was going to become different from when pre-whales first entered it?

DAVID: God designs new versions of species when required, time variable.

dhw: Thank you. At long last you have agreed that innovations come into existence when required (I would add “allowed”) and not beforehand in anticipation of not yet existing conditions. No doubt you will withdraw this agreement.

DAVID: As I said its God's doing His next required step on the way to humans, just following His plan. Humans won't appear unless desired by God (Adler).

According to you, nothing would appear unless desired by God, since he designed everything. So he kept popping in every few million years to turn leggy flippers into proper flippers on the way to designing humans. Anyway, I’m pleased to see that you have not withdrawn your statement that he “designs new species when required”, i.e. not BEFORE they are required (or “allowed”).