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

by dhw, Sunday, March 27, 2022, 08:54 (970 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I have explained 'countless life forms and foods'. Ecosystems are piled upon ecosystems and relate to each other. It all comes down to life requires constant energy intake. You admit this and then constantly ignore it with your constant illogical complaint.

dhw: There is no dispute over the obvious fact that all life forms require energy. You know perfectly well that the dispute is over [the rest of your theory], which makes no sense even to you: “God makes sense only to Himself. We may not understand His reasons.”

DAVID: That quote of mine is on point: I accept what God has done without questioning His reasons. But the endpoint of humans is unquestionable. Therefore He wanted humans and directed events for that purpose. Obvious logic based on my premise.

Correction: you accept your theory about what God has done (specially designed every life form, econiche, natural wonder etc., including all those with no connection to humans) and why he has done it (as “part of the goal of evolving humans” plus food), and you cannot explain its illogicality . Now you keep switching from purpose and goal to endpoint. We can agree that the evolution of species appears to have ended with us. But that does not remove the illogicality of the bolded theory, which you like to present as fact and which only makes sense to your God.

DAVID: Accepting the history of reality as God's work explains it all. Why are we here? How do you explain it?

dhw: As an agnostic, I accept the possibility that there is a God who is responsible for the history of reality. It is your inexplicable version of the history of reality that I question, as above. As for the very different question of why are we here, you have suggested it’s because God wants us to admire his work and have a relationship with him, and you have volunteered the fact that you think God enjoys creating and is interested in his creations. All perfectly feasible and very human, but offering no logical explanation for the theory bolded above.

DAVID: Logic above! My guesses about God. which you love to quote. have no basis in fact! They are not related to my conclusion about God desiring humans.

Everything I quote from you is a “guess”, including the above theory about God’s one and only purpose and method of achieving it. You asked me why we are here, and I repeated your own humanizing theory. But just to set the record straight, I don’t have a problem with God desiring humans (plus food). However if, as you believe, he specially designed all the other species not connected with humans and or food, he must have “desired” them too, so humans could not have been his only purpose. Alternatively, he may have been experimenting, or getting new ideas as he went along, which you agree offers a logical explanation, but that is too humanizing for your God, although you agree he probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours.

God's choice of war over peace

DAVID: Symbiosis involves an intimate bonded relationship. How could that possibly work for all of life?

dhw: It is an example of peaceful cooperation. Why shouldn’t it work for all of life?

DAVID: Each symbiotic relationship is a specialized two-species mechanism. Humans should eat symbiotically is what you suggest? Explain.

Badly phrased by me. Symbiosis is an example of peaceful cooperation. Why shouldn’t peaceful cooperation work for all of life?

dhw: You insist on imposing limits on your all-powerful God’s abilities. [...]

DAVID: Again, fully answered above. I have no limits on God's abilities, but cannot answer your wild wishes for my God that you invent for Him as a straw man tactic.

Why do you insist that your all-powerful God could not possibly have created a Garden of Eden even if he’d wanted to? You should know from all the books which have told how to think for yourself about God that “theodicy” is a colossal problem for theologians. Why did God create evil? It’s the same problem: why did God create a system of life that depended on dog eating dog, even though it is perfectly possible even within the current system for life forms to live in peace and cooperation with one another, and to find foods that do not involve killing and eating other sentient life forms?

DAVID: […] And now cell committees thought to produce humans. How intelligent of them!

Evolution is the history of single cells combining and cooperating to form new and increasingly complex communities. According to you - who believe in common descent apart from when you don’t (the Cambrian) – your God either preprogrammed every combination 3.8 billion years ago, or he kept dabbling one by one with each individual cell community to create new combinations. A theistic alternative is that he gave them the intelligence to do their own designing (though he could always dabble if he wanted to), with the result that each new organ and organism presents us with a shining example of peaceful cooperation.