Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, August 13, 2022, 08:12 (620 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The past certainly has a role of producing the present.
And
Past forms produced us and our food supply by evolving into us.

dhw: Of course it does/they did, in the form of those branches of evolution that led to us and our food. But your trick is to ignore all those past forms which did NOT evolve into us and our food, although you believe your God designed each and every one of them as preparation and indeed an “absolute requirement” for us and our food. So please stop dodging.

DAVID: My belief is not a dodge, but analyzes in a way you do not. All of evolution is God's designs and all of those branches which did not lead to us created the huge food supply we need now.

So your God deliberately designed every single form of life and every econiche throughout 3.X billion years to lead either to us to our food bush, although “the current bush of food is NOW for humans NOW. There were smaller bushes in the PAST for PAST forms” and “extinct life [which formed the bushes of the past for the past] has no role in current time”. And you have no idea why your all-powerful, all-purposeful God was unable to design his only goal (us and our food) without all these countless precursors, even though apparently he was perfectly capable of designing species without precursors. And your theories make sense only to God, i.e. not to you.

DAVID: I observe what God did and accept it. I don't have to know His reasons, but you demand them!!! We are not supposed to understand God fully, remember.

Same as usual. You accept your THEORIES about what God did, and why he did it, and your theories don’t make sense to you.

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

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

dhw: So are you saying that we invented a form of the emotion of love that he knew nothing about? Once more, if he knows love and every other emotion, what do you mean by love and every other emotion being “allegorical”?

DAVID: Constant misinterpretation. God's form of His own emotion of love may parallel ours but may not be exactly like our form. Samo old allegory approach, of course. And God knows exactly about our form of love. Why did you pose that question?

I want to know what you mean by “allegorical”. You agree that a Creator could have endowed us with emotions and thought patterns of his own, offer us a vision of God which includes just such emotions and patterns, complain if I do the same, and come up with “allegorical” emotion, which you then refuse to define.

dhw: […] why do you think a single-minded designer (don’t forget the manner in which you compared yourself to him when talking of design) is less human than an experimental scientist, or an artist coming up with new ideas as he goes along?

DAVID: The comparison to humans shows immediately how you humanize God in your imagination.

You dismissed my proposal that God may have enabled cells to do their own designing as “secondhand” design, and called on your own experience as a designer (much better to do it yourself). Wouldn't you call this "humanizing", and why is is less humanizing than a God who enables organisms to do their own designing, just as he enables humans to do their own designing?

Adler

dhw: […] if your theories of evolution “make sense only to God”, no amount of Adler worship is going to make them intelligible to anyone.

DAVID: Adler's works are highly respected world-wide. He advised the Catholic Church as a philosopher of religion!!!

I am not discussing Adler’s importance. I am discussing your theories, which by your own admission “make sense only to God”. That means even Adler would not have understood them – and I doubt if he even knew about those we have been discussing on this thread, since you always emphasize that his work is dedicated to the importance of humans as evidence for the existence of God and does NOT cover those theories.