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

by dhw, Sunday, May 29, 2022, 09:28 (907 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You can’t answer, and yet you claim that your theories make perfect sense to you.

DAVID: If course it makes perfect sense to me or I wouldn't propose the theories I present. The designer developed evolution in stages, building the future from the past organisms, creating ever more complexity using the basic biochemistry of life. I see what history tells us the designer did, but why He chose that method of creating us is from His reasoning, not revealed to us. So your objections to His methodology I view as criticisms about Him.

I have no objections to your general description of evolution, and my criticism is not of your God. My objections are to your theories about his purpose and method which, when combined, make no sense even to you: (a) that he designed every past organism individually, (b) that he did so for the one and only purpose of designing us and our food, (c) that every single one – including all those that did not lead to us and our food - was “an absolute requirement for the evolutionary process [by which you mean God’s individual design of every life form and econiche] to finally produce humans”; and (d) that although you say his one and only purpose was us and – according to you - he was capable of designing species directly, with no predecessors, he chose to design us in stages. None of these theories is “history”, and you cannot find any way of fitting them together in a logical explanation of the history. Put together, they “make sense only to God.” But maybe one or more of these theories are wrong, and that is why you can’t explain why your designer would think in such an illogical way.

dhw: All of life is amazing. I don’t know who Adler was referring to when he said it was unexpected (by whom?).

DAVID: Unexpected by any thinking person. Adler used the theory that we are such an unusual result, there had to be a God creator to produce such an endpoint, it could not have appeared naturally.

The same argument can and is used of all life’s complexities – hence your repeated comment at the end of every article about natural wonders, lifestyles, bodies etc., exemplified today under “T cells”: “The design of the cells and their maintenance mechanism had to be designed all at once from the beginning of their development. Not by chance.” And it is an argument which I do not oppose.

dhw: Maybe the 50/50 was your own assessment of the odds when you wrote: “That mind may know and understand human emotions and desires, since that mind created us, but may have no human emotions itself. 50/50 still means yes or no.” My apologies to Adler if it was you who gave odds of 50/50 concerning your God’s human thought patterns and emotions. All the more reason, though, why you should not reject my “humanizing” alternatives out of hand.

DAVID: Sorry. I was simply reminding what 50/50 means. Your humanizing assumes a form of God that I believe does not exist.

I know what 50/50 means. And since you tell us that there is a 50/50 chance that God may/may not have human thought patterns and emotions, it is clearly absurd to dismiss logical theories solely on the grounds that they entail God possibly having human thought patterns and emotions. If I say there is a 50/50 chance that God exists, does that mean I reject the possibility of God’s existence?

The rest of your post repeats points already dealt with.