Return to David's theory of evolution PART 1 (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, May 28, 2022, 07:36 (908 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: But evolution did lead to us. You can't deny it.

dhw: Of course I don’t deny it. It also led to the duckbilled platypus. And according to you, your God specially designed countless numbers of extinct life forms and econiches that did not lead to us or our food. For the thousandth time, why would he specially design all of them if his one and only purpose was to design us (plus our food)?

DAVID: His endpoint was/is us. For the millionth time I can't answer your question. That it was the method God chose is obvious. Your human level objection is that it is roundabout. And Adler's point that we are an amazing unexpected result is absolutely valid.

You keep changing your terminology. We are the latest species to evolve. The “endpoint” does not mean his one and only goal. I do not object to the roundabout way in which H. sapiens evolved. I object to your theory 1) that every other life form throughout 3.X billion years was an “absolute requirement”, specially designed as preparation for us and our food, and 2) I ask why a God who you claim designed species with no precursors (from which we are descended) would have designed us in stages. You can’t answer, and yet you claim that your theories make perfect sense to you. (See below.) All of life is amazing. I don’t know who Adler was referring to when he said it was unexpected (by whom?), but the same might be said of the duckbilled platypus. I accept that our intelligence is amazing, and that all of life’s complexities offer a good argument for the existence of a designer. That is not the theory I am challenging!

DAVID: And you still denigrate the food supply need, as evidenced by the 'worry'. Without all those existing branches of the bush evolution created our food supply would not handle our burgeoning population. You can't have it both ways. The designer foresaw His created future.

dhw: All life needs food. The existing branches of our food supply, as you have so rightly observed, are for the PRESENT, and the vast majority of the food supplies you say your God specially designed over 3.X billion pre-human years were for the PAST, and “extinct life has no role to play in current time”. Please stop pretending that I denigrate the importance of food for us and every other species that ever lived. I denigrate a theory which claims that your God’s only purpose was to design us and our econiches, and therefore he designed countless life forms and econiches which did not lead to us and our econiches.

DAVID: Same irrational criticism of God's method.

It is not a criticism of God’s method but of your theory concerning his purpose and his method of achieving it – a theory which you keep admitting you cannot explain!

And under “efficiency in cells”:
DAVID: The designer knew exactly what He was doing and why. dhw's superfical analysis of God's roundabout way of producing us is a good case in point. As we dig in, every time we find superb design. Humans are a prime endpoint example.

A silly snipe. I have never denied that we find superb design, and I have no doubt that your God – if he exists - knew what he was doing and why. I have not “analysed” the fact that humans evolved step by step. I have analysed your illogical theory that your God’s one and only purpose was to design us, and yet despite his all-powerfulness and ability (according to you) to design species with no precursors, the history shows us that humans evolved in stages. According to you, this theory “makes sense only to God”.

DAVID: Your declaration that my theories make no sense to me is the strangest psychiatric analysis I've ever seen. I make perfect sense to me, and if you wish to act as my psychiatrist you must listen to what I tell you about my thinking and accept it for analysis at the start of our counselling sessions. To counter your conclusions: I simply accept the history as what did rationally.

We both accept the history, which is that life evolved from bacteria into a vast variety of life forms etc., some of which led to humans while others did not. I do not wish to act as your psychiatrist. When you say you can’t explain the two theories bolded above, and they “make sense only to God”, I can only assume this means they don’t make sense to you. How that comes to mean that your theories make perfect sense to you I really don’t know, but I do know that you frequently try to divert attention away from your illogical theories by attacking my alternatives, or my agnosticism, or my “way of thinking about God” – as if God had told you the right way to think about him!