Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, September 04, 2022, 16:50 (594 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I am fully aware of religious wars and condemn them as you do. but I don't dwell on them as you constantly do. You completely miss the Dayenu point of the Passover song, accepting God's gifts without question.

dhw: This is a complete non sequitur! You wrote: “to believers it doesn’t matter if we can’t understand God’s personal reasons.” Some believers think they know God’s “personal reasons”, and it matters so much to them that they go and kill other believers who disagree with their interpretation of God’s “personal reasons”. As for the Dayenu point of view, if God exists, by all means let us be thankful for the wonderful things he has created, but why must we accept illogical theories about why and how he created them, and why must we turn a blind eye to the horrors that he has also created? Who made up such silly rules?

It is your problem, not mine. You always emphasize the horrible, while it is present it is a minuscule portion of all daily events.

dhw: […] it is no defence of an interpretation to admit that it doesn’t make sense even to the interpreter. (“It makes sense only to God.”)

DAVID: Your usual diatribe. The massive diversity of life forms is required for the enormous system of food supply coming from many large and small ecosystems.

dhw: I shan’t repeat my “diatribe”, since you simply continue to leave out the salient parts of your theories. The massive diversity of life (animal and vegetable) over the last 3.8 billion years is what provided/provides the food supply for those within each and every ecosystem extinct and extant. That does not mean that every single extinct form of life and every single ecosystem was an “absolute requirement” in preparation for H. sapiens and our food.

The New Zealand story refutes you.

DAVID: What I have bolded above is your constant confusion about evolution by God and Darwin evolution. They are look-alike but very different!!!! In God evolution God does whatever He wishes as the Cambrian, the fact of which destroys Darwin.

dhw: The theory that H. sapiens descended from species that had no precursors (Cambrian) destroys the theory that your God’s purpose from the very beginning was to design H. sapiens.

dhw please look at your own words, now in red:

dhw: The theory that your God designed every single life form as an “absolute requirement" for us and our food is destroyed by the fact that countless extinct life forms had no connection with us and our food. Darwin is irrelevant to this discussion. If God exists, I doubt if anyone would argue that he did not do what he wished to do. If we look on the history of life and interpret it as a free-for-all, then we would argue that he wished to create a free-for-all. The fact that an interpretation differs from your own interpretation does not automatically mean that it is wrong.

The Cambrian is God doing His designing job as He wishes. Your words agree!! The free-for-all
is the fixed pattern of ecosystems all over the world. See New Zealand entry today.

Transferred from “More miscellany”:

DAVID: The God I envision has a direct vision for His evolutionary processes and pursues them very directly and with purpose.

dhw: I agree, and all my alternative theories have him doing just that. Only your theories have him using evolutionary processes to pursue his purpose indirectly, and only your theories make no sense to you or to me. (They “make sense only to God.”)

Repeated fully answered in the past posts.

DAVID: What emotions He might have similar to ours do not change His purposeful creations. They are a side issue which do not affect His pursuit of purpose.

dhw: We are talking about his purpose, and I suggest that whatever human emotions he might have would be the driving force behind his creativity. For instance, your own guess that he wanted to design a being who would recognize him, admire his work and have a relationship with him would motivate him into trying to create such a being. Or his “enjoyment” and “interest” might motivate him into creating things that he enjoys creating and will be interested in. You have proposed possible “emotions” that would not be a side issue but a purpose.

All human guesses of God's possible pesonal reactions to His creations. I'll remind God is a person like no other person. I view Him as creating without emotions driving His creations. Your humanized God is just the opposite.