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

by dhw, Tuesday, March 15, 2022, 07:03 (774 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You evade the truism that at each stage of evolution ecosystem provided food for all.

dhw: I don’t “evade” it. I merely point out that “food for all” does not mean that all past foods and all past eaters and past eaten were “preparation” for humans, and were part of your God’s “goal of evolving [= designing] humans” and our food. Please stop dodging!

DAVID: Not a dodge. I view all of evolution as a connected mechanism to produce humans.

I know you do. And yet you also agree that past foods were for the past and not for the present, and extinct life had no role to play in current life, and there is no direct connection between the brontosaurus and us, and you have no idea why your God – whose only purpose was us and our food – would have designed countless life forms and foods that had no connection with us.

dhw: Experimentation and having new ideas are not “changing his mind”. They are theories to explain why he might have individually designed every life form plus food that had no connection with humans – that part of your theory which otherwise makes no sense if his sole purpose was to design humans plus our food. [...]

DAVID: [...] I view God as all-knowing and all-purposeful with specific goals from the beginning of His creating.

Experimentation provides a logical explanation for your God wanting to design humans but designing life forms etc. that turned out to have no connection with humans. On the other hand, the new ideas theory focuses on a “specific goal” of creating interesting things to watch, and learning as he goes along. A “free-for-all” suggests the same goal, with the added enjoyment provided by the unexpected. All of these theories are all-purposeful with specific goals from the beginning. However, they depict a God who is not all-knowing but – perhaps along the lines of A.N.Whitehead’s “process theology” – is always “becoming”, i.e. learning and experiencing.

DAVID: But we discuss and question each other. That I won't accept your un-god-like view of God is fact.

dhw: Yes, it is a fact that you think you know what God must be like or can’t be like, and so you cling to an illogical theory which you can’t explain.

DAVID: Same illogical complaint. Just accept history as showing God's choices.

If God exists, then clearly the countless branches unconnected with humans and their food must have been his choice. That makes nonsense of the claim that humans and their food were his one and only choice.

dhw: The debate about what ID-ers believe is a digression from this issue. If, as you claim, they all believe in the above theory, please tell me how they explain the obvious discrepancy.

Instead of doing so, you offered us a video pooh-poohing common descent, and helping to show up the contradictory elements of your own beliefs:

dhw: You yourself have accepted the image of life as a bush, you believe that we and all other life forms are descended from bacteria, you accept that at least the fossil record confirms our descent from the apes, and you insist that evolution is a whole. But as we don’t have a fossil record of all species in all stages going back to bacteria, you also insist that evolution is not a whole, and your God kept popping in to design new species without precursors. And although most of these and their food had no connection with us and our food, they were all apparently preparation for us and our food. Your theory of evolution is a total mess!

DAVID: I'm just giving you a taste of what ID does in their propaganda. I am free, as you are, to develop my individual theories.

You keep telling me that ID supports your illogical theory, then you quote an ID-er whose “propaganda” negates half of what you believe, and you totally ignore the contradictions in your own beliefs that I have just listed.