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

by David Turell , Sunday, February 20, 2022, 15:47 (1005 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: God designs as He wishes to advance His purposes.

dhw: Agreed. And now that we have plural purposes instead of just one, and it makes sense to you that he might have created life because he enjoyed creating something he could be interested in, and it also makes sense to you that your God is logical and may have thought patterns and emotions similar to ours, we can examine different theistic theories to explain the course of evolution.

DAVID: Note the bolded sections in your description of our 'agreement'. God does not create to produce enjoyment for Himself as a primary purpose. It is a secondary effect.

dhw: At least we are now making a little bit of headway – a purpose is a purpose - but I wish you wouldn’t make such authoritative statements on your God’s behalf. You have no more direct access to him (if he exists) than I have. Now please tell us what you think is his primary purpose for creating the whole bush of life, including humans.

God didn't tell me. My point above is God selflessly creates, with no regard to affecting His emotions as He goes about His business of fulfilling His planned events. You agree neither of us has direct access. Respect that fact as we hypothesize.

dhw: […] I’d like to go back to your two theories of preprogramming and dabbling. I’m not dismissing them, but, taking one of our favourite examples...
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 explain why you consider this question to be “facetious”.

DAVID: Absolutely facetious. I've repeated told you I can see early How God speciates through His programming of the genome is not known! The point remains simple: God as the designer programs however He does it pre-programming and later making changes (dabbling) as necessary probabilities.

dhw: The necessary “phenotypic changes” were made. You see early programming for whales’ deep-sea diving as one possibility, and individual dabbling as the other, but you dismiss as “facetious” the theories of a 3.8-billion-year-old programme for deep sea diving or of your God performing some kind of operation on a group of whales. (Newly inserted ad hoc programmes would of course also be a form of dabbling operation requiring interference with the existing genome.) How else can you programme without programming, or dabble without dabbling?

Exactly! See today's article on seemingly directed mutation in the 'Nature Journal' study. I still see a designer at work.