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

by dhw, Tuesday, May 17, 2022, 08:04 (703 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I wish you would stop a 'rigidity' of comments in bold on my quote about your type of God theories: I agreed they only fit a very humanized God's actions.

dhw: And you agree that your God might possibly have thought patterns, emotions and logic similar to our own. Therefore, you agree that my logical theories are possible.

DAVID: God is not human. He knows our emotions, but if He has any of them is unknown. To repeat: Your theories about God only fit a very humanized form of God.

Everything about God is “unknown”, including his existence, and so we only have theories. To repeat: I have never said that, if he exists, the creator of the universe and of life itself is a human being, but you have agreed that it is possible he has thought patterns in common with ours - which is perfectly feasible since he would be the first cause of everything that exists - and so a theory endowing him with human thought patterns is possible, for instance following on from your guess (once a certainty) that he enjoys creating and is interested in what he creates.

dhw: Thank you for acknowledging that your set of beliefs is fixed – i.e. rigid. At one time, of course you were flexible enough to consider ideas different from those you held originally, but now you have closed your mind. The result is a fixed belief which is so illogical that you are forced to acknowledge you cannot explain it and it “makes sense only to God”.

DAVID: I cannot explain God's works for you. I can only analyze them in view of the picture I have of a very purposeful God who knows His goals, and exactly how to reach them in vast contrast to your God-vision of a humanized bumbler. Of course, God makes sense to himself.

Correction: you cannot explain your interpretation of God’s works, and the quote is that your interpretation “makes sense only to God”, which means it does not make sense to you. You persist in seeing purposeful experimentation as “bumbling”, and in ignoring other alternatives which have him knowing exactly how to achieve his purpose: e.g. following your own “guess”, that he wants to enjoy creating things that will be interesting for him to watch.

DAVID: God as designer creates the gaps He wishes to create. The contradictions exist in your mind.

dhw: I have just pointed out that this is a perfectly feasible view. However, it contradicts your insistence that evolution is a continuous process, as explained in the bold which you have ignored. And if it is not continuous, and we are descended from specially designed species with no precursors, how does that support the view that his one and only purpose from the outset was to design us? You can’t explain it. “It makes sense only to God.”

DAVID: A designer who is evolving organisms over time from single cells to us is running a continuous process under his control. There can be gaps in phenotype, but never in biochemistry of life, under his controls. That is an obvious explanation, while you torture quotes into meaninglessness. God's evolution is not Darwinian.

As I pointed out in bold in the same post, “the fact that all life is biochemical does not explain the gaps”. H.sapiens is a species, and while I am happy to follow Darwin’s argument that all species descend from earlier species (common descent), you emphasize the gaps which you believe denote speciation without precursors. This clearly breaks the continuity of speciation, and since you claim that we humans are descended from species that had no precursors, you contradict your own belief in continuity from bacteria to us, and hence your belief that we were your God’s one and only purpose from the very start.

Schroeder
DAVID: The problem is your refusal to accept that we believers are content with what God created and the way He decided to do it. […] (dhw's bold)

dhw: You talk as if every Jewish, Christian, Muslim, African, Indian, South American “believer” believes in your combined theories of evolution, which “make sense only to God”.

DAVID: God's evolution makes sense to me, as non-Darwinian. My theories are a distillation of believer's commentaries, especially ID.

Please stop conflating ID (which sets out to provide evidence that God exists) with your illogical theory of evolution, and please stop pretending that “we believers” accept this theory, which you admit you cannot explain and which “makes sense only to God”.

dhw (concerning “humanization”): ...have you never heard of believers who think God watches over them, loves them, judges them, wants them to worship him etc.? You have frequently expressed your negative view of the way religions “humanize” God, but perhaps you don’t count religious people as “believers” and only you know how to think about God.

DAVID: Thank you for recognizing those religious folks are the ones I ignore in my thinking!!!

So please stop pretending that “we believers” accept your illogical theory of evolution and your blinkered way of thinking about God.