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

by David Turell , Tuesday, February 22, 2022, 16:00 (1003 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Your comment raises the obvious point that if you don't accept selflessly, why do you then accept enjoys and interested? We view God totally differently.

dhw: I have simply followed up your own certainty that your God enjoys creating and is interested in his creations. I have no idea how one can enjoy and be interested “selflessly”, and three days ago, when I proposed that this might have been his purpose (with humans as the most interesting of his creations), you wrote “now you make sense”,

My problem with some of your statements is they are couched in slightly different meanings to distort a point I've made. So I step back to correct it.

dhw: but the following day you reduced his enjoyment and interest to a “secondary effect” and not a primary purpose, although you didn’t know what the primary purpose might be. Today, once again you have changed your tune:

DAVID: As for primary purpose, He created this reality and evolved life to an endpoint of humans. I think that shows purpose enough.

dhw: An endpoint does not have to be a purpose, let alone a purpose from the very beginning, and the fact that ours is the last species so far does not explain why he specially designed all the life forms, natural wonders etc. that preceded us and had no connection with us. You seem to be backtracking to the bad old days when you maintained that humans and their food were his one and only purpose and all other life forms were “part of the goal of evolving [=designing] humans” and their food, though you accused me of distorting your theory. (See also “More miscellany”, where you say it was all “in preparation for humans”.) Crunch question: Do you or do you not accept that if he specially designed all other life forms, natural wonders etc., then humans and their food could not have been his one and only purpose in creating life?

Crunch question again a twisted distortion. A start: endpoint can be a purpose, obviously as a real interpretation. And God's simple choice of a mechanism resembling what we call evolution to create humans is shown by accepting history as God's doing. Try it on. I continue to view humans as a desired endpoint, the argument Adler used. Other life forms were necessary secondary creations, as steps to humans and food supply for all, since life requires continuous energy supply .

DAVID: I never forget that you accept a weird theory that true designers hand off their work to secondhand sources. How many substitutes wrote your novels or plays?

dhw: I propose it as one of several possibilities. Your analogy is way off target, and still provides no defence of a theory which is so far-fetched that when I asked if that was what you believed, you dismissed my question as facetious. I don’t know whether you or anyone else will be interested in a writer’s creative process, but in brief: some writers do plan their works in advance, but others, like me, begin with an idea, and do not know how it will develop. I am frequently astonished at developments that take place as the characters take over the story, and although of course I can dabble, that is usually an unwise thing to do. So far, do you see the possible parallels with your God’s possible creative process? I can also make revisions retrospectively, which God can’t do, but – and this has happened to me a few times – I can also bin the work (the equivalent, I suppose of your God deciding to stage an extinction). For me, this sometimes (rarely) happens if I can actually see what’s coming, and then I lose interest. It’s the constant thrill of discovery that keeps me writing. I am the God in your analogy, and the characters are the cells. I write because I love writing (if things go well), and I am fascinated by the surprising developments I have set in motion. Of course I hope that my work will please others, but in the first instance, I write to please myself.

The short answer is dhw is a sole designer, nothing secondhand. My point is proven .