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

by dhw, Monday, January 03, 2022, 14:11 (844 days ago) @ David Turell

PART ONE

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?

dhw: 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!

DAVID: There is the major difference between us. I accept God's actions as dayenu, enough. I don't question why He did what He did, but interpret it as His desired goal/goals. Your God with amorphous thinking is not the God I envision.

It is absurd to keep emphasizing how purposeful your God is if you are not prepared to discuss his purpose. You do not “accept” God’s actions – you merely cling rigidly to your belief that he individually designed every life form and natural wonder, and that he did so for the sole purpose of producing sapiens plus food! You could hardly impose a more “amorphous” shape on his thinking than having him create countless life forms that had no connection with his one and only goal. In all three of the alternatives I have presented above, he has a very precise purpose (see also under “Cellular intelligence”) and his pursuit of it explains the vast variety of extinct and extant life forms that constitute the whole history of evolution.

dhw: 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).

dhw: 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 Anyway, I’m pleased to see that you have not withdrawn your statement that he “designs new species when required”, i.e. not BEFORE they are required (or “allowed”).

DAVID: I don't see the difference you infer. God designs species to handle living requirements at the time of their existence. They arrive prepared for their future.

But you believe in common descent. So even in your own God-does-it-all scenario, he does not change existing organisms in anticipation of new conditions – as you have always maintained in the past – but in response to the conditions that exist. And then of course they are prepared for a future under those conditions, until things change again, and then he does another dabble – or his 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every change throughout life’s history switches itself on at the appropriate moment, i.e. when conditions change (and not before they change). And when you have him designing creatures "de novo", they must be able to handle requirements at the time of their birth - i.e. he'll produce them at the time when conditions have already changed, not before they change.