Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, September 02, 2022, 18:38 (601 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: […] to believers it doesn't matter if we can't understand God's personal reasons. It is your problem you create in the way you approach God.

dhw: To believers in what? Different beliefs have resulted in some of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, as believers disagree on God’s “personal reasons”. Do you honestly think that every believer in God believes that he had only one purpose (us and our food) and therefore designed every single extinct species, ecosystem, lifestyle, natural wonder etc. as an “absolute requirement” for us and our ecosystems? If God exists, nobody knows his nature or his “personal reasons”, so why do you put forward theories that don’t make sense to you (they “make sense only to God”) if it doesn’t matter that we can’t know the truth?

I know past believers did terrible things in the name of God. Bringing it up now is unimportant, but shows your anti-belief prejudice. Just as you refuse to accept my view in my belief system that I can accept the history of evolution as God's works for His reasons and am content with it. The bold above is the basis for attempts at interpretation of His personality.

Secondhand design

DAVID: I'm sorry I understand the problems of design by a designer you don't. I've done many designs, and although I am not God, I know the equivalent problems secondhand has at my level.

dhw: But your level is not God’s level. You have a single goal, and if you can implement it yourself, you do so directly. For you, no point in getting someone else to do it (= secondhand). You try to apply this logic to God. What doesn’t make sense to you or me is the fact that you impose a single goal on him (designing us plus our food) but find that instead of implementing it directly, he designs countless life forms that have no connection with his goal, and even his goal (sapiens) is designed in stages with features that need to undergo change after change. If you wish to design a house, you do not begin by designing a bicycle, a motor car and an airplane. And you do not provide your house with bits and pieces which you will later change into different bits and pieces. The obvious conclusion: God’s goal and/or methods of achieving his goal can’t have been anything like yours.

DAVID: I'm discussing one specific: how to plan new species, and I know the secondhand problems. You are trying again to complain about how God evolved us. We have only one known history which I say God created. And I don't question His logic as your poor human reasoning does.

dhw: Since when did you plan new species? Yes, you are discussing one specific – you plan one item and you execute your single plan directly, which is a more efficient way for you than passing it over to someone else (secondhand) who might mess it up. But the “known history” of life on Earth does not reveal the direct execution of the single plan you impose on your God. For those of us who believe in evolution, including yourself, your God did not directly design us sapiens and our food supplies. He directly designed countless species and food supplies that did not even lead to us, and he did not even design us directly, but did so in stages. The complete opposite of your good self, with your single plan and single mode of execution.

You are totally ignoring the overwhelming evidence God prefers to evolve everything He ever created in small stages, with the exception of the Cambrian Explosion.

dhw: This is not a “complaint about how God evolved us”. It is a complaint about your theories, which “make sense only to God” and therefore not to yourself, and about your rejection of an alternative THEISTIC theory (cellular intelligence, designed by your God) on the grounds that your God had to design the way you do, even though history shows that he didn’t.

It is obvious God designs in small stages. I reject your interpretation.

DAVID: I accept God's works without question. I try to interpret. And as I interpret, it all makes sense to me.

dhw: You accept your interpretation of God’s work without question, and you admit that it “makes sense only to God”, which can only mean that it does not make sense to you.

It makes perfect sense to me. Your psychoanalysis of me is silly.