Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, August 11, 2022, 17:09 (617 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: (Why have you used the present tense in your last sentence?)

DAVID: I don't understand your question.

dhw: “Have a role” only relates to the present. It leaves out all the PAST systems which had NO role, although you claim they were all essential.

The past certainly has a role of producing the present.

dhw: I must confess I find it hard to believe that you yourself now reject your above statements and believe your God designed every single PAST and extinct life form and food bush throughout 3.X billion pre-human years as an “absolute requirement” for himself to design the current us and our current food bush.

DAVID: I don't reject the statements, and don't know why you think that.

dhw: You agree in the above statements that the majority of extinct forms had no role to play in the production of us and our food, but you deny that you agree (“I don’t know how you can claim I agreed.”)

Confused thinking. Past forms produced us and our food supply by evolving into us.

DAVID: We cannot know His personal reasons but can analyze probable ones.

dhw: Agreed. But your analysis has produced reasons which do not make sense even to you, and I suggest that this rather reduces their probability.

I accept what God did and you don't is the reason we debate. What I think about God makes sesne to me even if you can't accept it.

DAVID: 'Thought and emotions' must be expressed allegorically which means not in any way equivalent to ours.

dhw: […] A couple of days ago, I asked how your God could have created love if he had no idea what love was. You replied:“For once you are thinking about God in a reasonable way. Of course, he knows love and every other emotion.” Please explain how his love is an “allegory”.

DAVID: Because He is a personage like no other human person.

dhw: How does that come to mean he has created love which does not actually mean love?

Of course, He gave us the ability to love, but His personal form of love may differ from ours.

dhw: I have included various thought patterns and emotions we have both listed, plus your God's very human desire for recognition and a relationship..... Unfortunately, your version has him incomprehensibly NOT pursuing his single purpose, because he spends 3.X billion years specially designing lots of different things that are not connected with his purpose, but in any case, why do you think your single-minded God is less human than my more open-minded God?

DAVID: They are connected as food supply, as you know. […]

dhw: The majority are NOT connected as food supply, as you have agreed above, and you have not answered my question: why do you think your single-minded God is less human than my more open-minded God?

By describing your God as open-minded that means not clearly determined to follow His planned purposes as I view my verson of God who knows exactly what He wants to do and follows His plan without changing his mind.

DAVID: Thinking about God requires some guidelines if religious teachings are ignored. Adler, as a philosopher of religion does just that and I follow those guidelines he provides.

dhw: I know you do, but I’m afraid that doesn’t help you to explain theories which you yourself regard as inexplicable and which make no sense to you – since they ”make sense only to God”.

DAVID: Of course, they make sense to God and I accept that. He can create in any say He wishes.

dhw: Whatever may have been your God’s purpose and method would make sense to him, and of course he can create any way he wishes. However, the wishes and ways you impose on him make no sense to you or to me, and your love of Adler does not make your theories any more intelligible.

Not intelligent to yo9, but to Adler. His approach in proving God involves the study of evolution which produced us, by assuming God caused evolution and how it reached us under His control.