Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, September 18, 2022, 11:26 (795 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You propose that your God wants full control, and in one of my theories, I propose that he doesn’t. Please explain why your proposal is “God thought” and mine is “human thought”.

DAVID: All of the possible reasons for actions by God indicate a personality requiring those actions. Your 'one of my theories' indicate you do not have a set description of God. You are amorphous in your concepts of God. I have one set view based on my reading/studies. I see your list of God's desires as showing a humanized God, not on showing the purposeful, selfless God I envision.

Of course, actions will reflect personality. All of my theories show a purposeful God, but since nobody can possibly know his personality, we can only offer theories. One minute you complain that my theories entail specific “human” characteristics, and the next you say they are “amorphous”! You yourself have no doubt that your God enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, and you even have him wanting our admiration, and you have no more proof of your “selflessness” than I have of my proposal that these human attributes suggest self-interest. Now please explain why the desire for full control is not human, whereas a desire to create autonomous beings is human.

dhw: These discussions are not about what Adler thinks or doesn’t think. Adler is not God. 1) How do you know that “God is not human in any way”, though he probably has thought patterns and emotions in common with us? 2) If (as you believe) your God’s one and only purpose was to design us and our food, why (as you believe) did he individually design countless organisms (e.g. our beloved brontosaurus) and foods that did not lead to us and our food? 3) If (as you believe) your God’s one and only purpose was to design H. sapiens and our food, why did he decide to design lots of hominins and homos before designing sapiens if (as you believe) he was perfectly capable of designing species without any precursors (Cambrian)? I do not regard “Read Adler” as an answer to these questions. However, I can accept your answer that you have no idea, and your theories “make sense only to God” and therefore not to you or to me.

DAVID: Same old discussion from you. 1) Adler taught me how to think about God.

How does Adler know that God is not human in any way, though he probably has thought patterns and emotions in common with us?

2) God used a process of creation that looks like evolution in the Darwin sense. That continuous process led to us and all the ecosystems of food supply, which supply is tenuous, and tells us all branches are necessary.

That continuous process led to us and to our current tenuous ecosystems but also to all the tenuous ecosystems that came to a dead end and did not lead to us and our ecosystems. Why do you think he designed all the tenuous ecosystems that did not lead to ours, if his only purpose was to design us and our tenuous ecosystems?

3) you have no concept of a designer. He can produce in simple steps or giant jumps (Cambrian) at His will. The Cambrian for thinking folks implies design, not your weird twist on it.

I have no doubt that your God could produce in simple steps or giant jumps at his will. And that is why I am asking you why you think he chose to design H. sapiens – who you say was his one and only purpose right from the start of life – in itsy-bitsy stages. Your answer is that you don’t know,. and your theory makes sense only to God. Some “thinking folks”, including me, would say that all life forms are so complex that they imply design. This has nothing to do with the question I asked in (3).

DAVID: As for your final distortion: My God does what He does for His own unknown reasons, but I have the IQ (mental capacity) to present cogent analyses of His works. And I have done just that here and in two books.

I have never doubted your IQ, and I have admired and learnt a great deal from your cogent analyses in your two books, which both set out to prove God’s existence “beyond a reasonable doubt”. It is the theories concerning your God’s purpose and method of achieving his purpose, as reproduced in my three questions, that I find just as irrational as you do, since according to you they “make sense only to God”, i.e. not to you or me.

DAVID: Can you offer us any authority on agnosticism philosophy besides yourself?

No. I do not believe that there is any “authority” on theism, atheism, or agnosticism. But I suspect you are simply trying once again to distract attention from my criticisms by asking me for a reading list. I can’t give you one. However, as I wrote on the Blechly thread: "If our ideas are based on other people’s findings, it is up to us to defend them – not to issue a reading list."