Return to David's theory of evolution PARTS 1 & 2 (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, February 02, 2022, 08:39 (1023 days ago) @ David Turell

This post has turned into a game called Dodge the Issue. Every entry except for “Hibernation”exemplifies the technique, and although I doubt if anyone else is interested, I’ll go on giving the same response to each dodge in the hope that eventually my dear opponent will accept what he has always accepted and tried to dodge: namely, that it doesn’t make sense for an all-powerful God with only one purpose (humans plus food) to devote himself to designing countless life forms plus foods that have no connection with his one and only purpose (humans plus food).

dhw: I don’t believe you are so blinkered that you cannot see the illogicality of a theory that has an all-powerful God with a single purpose (us) deliberately designing countless life forms that have no connection with us! If I told you that the one and only thing I wanted to make was a rowing boat, and so first I proceeded to make a kitchen cupboard, a bookshelf and a rabbit hutch, you’d send me off to have my brain tested.

DAVID: Again you have returned to a purely human example of invention. Stop imagining a human God!!! God does what He wants any way He wants and He chose to evolve us from bacteria as His history shows.

dhw: It is an example of how purpose and action go together. Of course God does what he wants, and if all he wanted was to design humans plus food, why did he first design countless life forms and foods that had no connection with humans? You admit that you can’t find any logical reason and tell me to ask God. But you won’t admit that your inability to find a reason might just possibly mean that your theory is wrong.

DAVID: The bold is your unreasonable distorted view of God's desires.

What distortion? You have said over and over again that your God’s one and only goal was to design humans and their food. I’ll be delighted if you now tell us this is not your belief, and perhaps you will at last tell us what other goals he had that explain all the life forms he specifically designed which had no connection with humans and their food.

DAVID: Evolution from bacteria to humans, as history shows, requires all those ancient steps. I have found my reason, which is simply accepting what God did. We are here, the surprise endpoint.

How does your "acceptance" that we are here provide a reason why your all-powerful God, whose one and only purpose was apparently to design us and our food, specifically designed countless life forms and foods that had no connection with us?

Life’s required metals

DAVID: No generalization in the statement that true evolution is stepwise from a beginning to the current endpoint and therefore all related.

dhw: Unfortunately, this generalization happens to leave out your claim that your God ONLY wanted evolution to lead to sapiens plus food, but he individually designed every step to every life form that ever existed, including all those which had no connection to his one and only desire to design sapiens plus food. Just one of your many dodges to leave out the one glaringly obvious illogical part of your theory.

DAVID: We go round and round. You are totally illogical from a believer's standpoint. Our views of God are wildly disparate. I simply accept what God does/did.

Another wild collection of non-responses to avoid the illogicality of your theory that your God fulfilled his one and only purpose by specially designing countless life forms that had no connection with his one and only purpose. Of course we go round and round, because although you admit you can’t find a logical explanation, you simply continue to play the dodging game.

Hibernation

DAVID: Each of us has the right to a choice based on logical evidence.

dhw: Of course. But (a) it is NOT a choice between “intelligent [cells] or intelligent design” – both theories entail intelligent design, and (b) you clearly do not accept your own odds of 50/50!

DAVID: I reject your 50% based on the view that God does not do secondhand design.

dhw: And yet your God gave sapiens the autonomous power to do his own designing – or are you now telling us that your God designed our buildings, machines and clothes, and writes our plays and paints our paintings? If he can give us freedom, why could he not possibly have given freedom to the micro-organisms whose evolution led to the great higgledy-piggledy bush of life (though he would still have been able to dabble if he wished to do so)?

DAVID: Micro-organisms cannot possibly see the future of complexity to the purpose of creating humans.

Whoever said they could??? You claimed that your God did not do what you call “secondhand design”. I pointed out that you believe he gave humans the autonomous power to do their own designing, so he does do “secondhand design”. And if he can do it for us, why can’t he do it for other life forms?