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

by dhw, Friday, February 18, 2022, 11:33 (1007 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Is it not perfectly reasonable to believe that if God created us, he would not have created thought patterns, emotions and logic he knew nothing about?

DAVID: God knew we would have emotions, thoughts and logic, but we cannot be sure how similar they are to His.

We cannot even be sure that he exists, but these discussions centre on his possible nature, purposes and methods if he does exist. I find it hard to conceive of a God who creates a being with emotions, thoughts and logic he himself never experienced. In particular, I’m interested in your own belief that he enjoys creating and is interested in what he creates. And now that at last we have rid ourselves of your theory that humans were your God’s one and only purpose, we can consider other possible purposes.

dhw: Indeed his purpose right from the start might have been to create an ever-changing world of life which he could watch with interest – the most interesting of all being human beings. Perhaps we are heading towards a theistic theory that makes sense?

DAVID: Now you make sense. You have repeated my guesses about God and His purposes with humans as an endpoint.

This is good news. At a stroke, we have settled a dispute that has gone on for years. Truly a red-letter day in the history of the Agnostic Web. Still assuming the existence of your God, we can now move on to discussing how he might have handled evolution.

Anticipation of use

DAVID: You know I believe God speciates.

dhw: […] I asked you how you think he did it. Specifically: did he provide the first cells 3.8 billion years ago with a programme for whales’ deep sea diving, or did he pop in one night and perform an operation on a few whales to engineer the necessary “phenotypic changes”? Please answer.

DAVID: Your facetious question has no answer. I have proposed an early program and dabbling as probabilities but in reality, I have no idea. Design requires a designing mind.

dhw: It’s not facetious! Those are the only two “possibilities” you have offered: preprogramming or dabbling. The very fact that you regard the above as “facetious” shows just how unlikely your two methods appear even to you! Good. If those two theories are too absurd for you to regard as anything but facetious, maybe you should consider other possibilities. Are you now ready to do so?

DAVID: If you accept as I do that God engineered evolution, note I've entered articles about early preparation of the genome, one such this week. Thus pre-programming and dabbling are probable valid ways God acted.

As above, I’m accepting God’s existence for the sake of our discussions on the possible nature, purposes, methods etc. of a possible God. I would certainly accept that he would have “engineered” evolution in the sense that he created the mechanisms which enabled evolution to take place. The question we are discussing here is HOW evolution took place. If by “preparation” of the genome you mean that he provided the first cells with the mechanisms required for all the developments we know have taken place throughout life’s history, I would regard that as an extremely reasonable theory. However, you insist that he individually designed every life form, econiche, natural wonder etc. Hence the above questions concerning the 3.8-billion-year-old programme or the constant flow of individual operations on individual organisms – theories which are so far-fetched that you regard my questions as “facetious”! This suggests that these two theories don’t make sense even to you. (Further discussion on other threads.)