Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, September 09, 2022, 07:44 (804 days ago) @ David Turell

Ecosystem importance

You keep making the same point over and over again:

DAVID: […] The point is clear: every living thing plays a role in the food web. The entire bush of life, with multiple unrelated genetic forms, creates the food web and is just as important a result of evolution as the appearance of humans. The planning by design is superb: enough food for a rapidly expanding human population. (Then you trace the history of our expansion).

(New Zealand:) Answered in my new entry 'ecosystem importance' today. It is all one big necessary design. [dhw: According to you, 3.X billion years’ worth of extinct ecosystems were necessary to feed a rapidly expanding human population.]

(Bees) … Years ago both dhw and I agreed it is bush of life, not a simple tree. That huge bush is the evidence of planning for the needed diversity. Yet dhw refuses to see the real picture of all leading to our food supply.

All living things play or played a role in their ecosystems. But there were countless living things and ecosystems in the huge bush of life before we appeared, and the majority did not lead to us or to our ecosystems. However, you insist that your God designed all those that did not lead to us or our ecosystems as an “absolute requirement” in preparation for us and our ecosystems, which you insist were his one and only goal. You can’t find any logical reason for this blatant contradiction, which is why you say your theories “make sense only to God”

Neandertals: dhw's worries about all the hominins and homos before us should be dispensed by my theory about God that He carefully takes evolutionary steps with everything He creates, as shown by known history.

I’m not worried. I just don’t understand why an all-powerful God who only wanted to create H. sapiens should have bothered creating all the other homos first, although you believe he is perfectly capable of creating species without precursors (the Cambrian). You can’t understand it either – it “makes sense only to God”. NB I am not denying evolution by stages. I am suggesting that there may be a better explanation than the one you say "makes sense only to God", i.e. not to you.

DAVID: 3) ecosystems are highly structured free-for-all battles for food, nothing like your imagined God's weak free-for-all loss of control over evolution. Satisfied?

dhw: A free-for-all battle for survival does not suggest that every single life form in every single econiche for 3.X billion years was individually designed as an “absolute requirement” in preparation for H. sapiens and our econiches. And I am not suggesting “loss of control”, but that the “free-for-all” was what your God (if he exists) wanted and created.

DAVID: FREE means uncontrolled!!

dhw: Correct. But that does not mean “loss of control”, which implies that your God wanted control, had it, and lost it. In the free-for-all theory, he deliberately created something that would act independently of himself. He did not want control! (But he could dabble if he wished to.)

DAVID: Your human reasoning always leads to a humanized God, not controlling reality.

A God who deliberately creates life as a free-for-all is no more “humanized” than a God who creates a puppet show in which he pulls all the strings.

dhw: […] please tell us which of your theories make sense only to God.

DAVID: Specifically: His choice to evolve every one of His creations.

dhw: Your usual obfuscation. By “evolve” you mean individually design, and you’ve forgotten the Cambrian species, which you insist were NOT the products of evolution anyway. But it doesn’t matter which you mean. Either belief, that God (if he exists) decided to evolve or decided to individually design all his creations, makes perfect sense. What does not make sense is the theory I have bolded above.

DAVID: The bolded objection comes from the fact I think about God totally differently than your thought patterns about God.

Yes, you do. You think about him in such a way that your beliefs concerning his purpose and method make no sense to you. You find all my theistic alternatives logical, but reject them even when they are based on your own guesses concerning his human thought patterns.

DAVID: You don't understand discussions of God's attributes are weak theories about a personage who is like no other person.

dhw: You have dodged your fake argument about “care”, and have now descended to the meaningless term “weak”. What is “weak”, for instance, about a God who in your own words enjoys creating and is interested in his creations?

DAVID: I use Adler as a guide for the caring issue. So?

You wrote that I was “trying to invent a personal God who cares about us”. I did no such thing. You were the one who suggested that God cares about us.

DAVID: Your repeated use of past quotes must be in context. They are theoretical guesses about the personality we don't know, and can't know, as God is a personage like no other one. Again Adler.

We agree that nobody can possibly know God’s personality. Your guesses concerning his combined purpose and method make no sense to you (they “make sense only to God”). How does that make them more likely than my logical alternatives?