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

by dhw, Wednesday, April 13, 2022, 11:25 (744 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 1)David’s theory of evolution: God’s one and only purpose from the very beginning was to design humans and their food. He proceeded to design countless life forms and foods which did not lead to humans and their food, and instead of designing humans directly, he evolved them step by step. Your explanation for all the life forms that did not lead to humans: God designed them so that they could eat one another: “food for all”. Past foods for the past, present for the present. This somehow means that all past life forms and foods were specially designed as preparation for humans and their foods.

DAVID: Bold is my view but in your biased way: Evolution of humans was a design method God used to arrive at His goal.

If he exists, then evolution of ALL life forms including humans and all those life forms that did not lead to humans was his design method. According to you, his “goal” for the other life forms was for them to eat one another (“food for all”)! Nothing to do with “preparation” for us.

DAVID: Just take evolution at face value. Simple to complex. Everything is connected from Archaea to now. Underlying basic biochemistry in Archaea to very complex biochemistry in specialized organs now. Only other alternative is direct creation, which is not supported by history.

Of course it’s not, and that is the big question: if your God’s only goal was us and our food, WHY did he not design us and our food directly?

dhw: Your "explanation" for God choosing evolution of humans over direct creation is that you cannot explain it, and “why can’t you accept that explanation?”

DAVID: How can I explain God's choice between the two available? Perhaps He had no
choice and only evolution was the way He had to go.

Having no choice limits his powers. An alternative is that perhaps your theory is wrong, and there are logical explanations for his choice.

dhw: 2)There is a continuous line from bacteria to us. God created new animals (Cambrian) which had no precursors and from which we are descended. The line from bacteria is continuous because although speciation is discontinuous, all living creatures share biochemistry. The fact that all species share biochemistry somehow confirms that your God’s one and only purpose was to design us.

DAVID: Agreed

Illogical: trilobites, brontosauruses and the duckbilled platypus are all biochemical, and therefore they were all specially designed as preparation for us and our food???

dhw: 3) Your God enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, but he cannot possibly have been motivated to create life because he wanted to enjoy creating things that would interest him.

DAVID: No!!! Your bias again. God is not human. He is a pure creator, who knows exactly what He wishes to create. His own emotional reactions, if any exist, are secondary and like ours.

I have never claimed that he is human, or that he did NOT create what he wished to create. You believe he enjoys creating and is interested in what he creates. How does that come to mean that he could not possibly have done his creating BECAUSE he wished to create things he could watch with interest?

dhw: 4)Enjoyment and interest as a purpose must be rejected, along with any logical explanation of 1) that entails human traits such as experimentation, or getting new ideas, because “God makes sense only to Himself”, and although he probably has thought patterns and emotions and logic similar to ours, he does not have thought patterns that are different from those that you approve of (such as kindness, a desire for his works to be admired, and for us to have a relationship with him).

DAVID: God never requires experimentation. He designs directly.

You have just agreed that he did NOT design directly: the “only other alternative is direct creation, which is not supported by history”. You can’t explain it. Experimentation can.

dhw: 5) Your God created a system which produced errors he did not want, and he tried – sometimes in vain - to remedy the errors. This makes him stronger than a God who deliberately creates a free-for-all.

DAVID: This is your strangest alternative. Any animal in a free-for-all has the same
biochemistry of life that will have errors!

And dhw: 6) He also created a system whereby organisms could only survive by killing one another.

DAVID: True.

You harp on about the existing system , and I ask why he chose it. You guess that he couldn’t avoid the “errors” (which makes him less than all-powerful), whereas I propose that he created what he wanted to create: a system in which the components were free to find their own ways of surviving. We call them “errors” because they are not good for us. And we may not like our pet pussy cat killing and eating our pet budgerigar, but eating meat was a method of survival freely designed and passed on by her ancestors (using their perhaps God-given intelligence). You say your kind God designed it.

dhw: 7)5) and 6) were the only systems that would work, and so he had no choice, although he chose to design them that way.

This was a reference to your self-contradictions concerning whether or not your God had a choice.