Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, September 22, 2022, 11:10 (582 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You miss the point. God's view of control may not be ours.

dhw: You miss the point. “Control” is not allegorical or figurative. I have defined “control” for you. The dispute is over what your God wanted to do and did do. Now please tell us why your belief that your God wanted to and did have “full control” over evolution is not human, whereas my theory that he did not want “full control” but gave autonomous control to his creations is human. (And please note your self-contradiction in “More Miscellany” PART ONE, which I will highlight.)

DAVID: We cannot know how God thinks. We can imagine it is like how we do it. That is where you are wrong.

So when you say your God wants full control, your statement is meaningless, because you don’t know what control means to God. Ditto when I say he does not want full control. There seems to be no point in any discussion about your God, since apparently our words might not mean what we both think they mean.

DAVID: In regard to 'control', in my view it relates to how purposeful God is. As before I view God as directly creating with no self-interest or reflection involved. You can try to make my God human as we must use human terms, but I see Him only in non-human terms, again, allegorically.

I don’t know what you mean by reflection here, or what the word “control” symbolizes (“allegorically”), but in any case if the term "self-interest” might not mean the same to God as it means to us, what is the point of even mentioning it? You “cannot know how God thinks”, so your statement is as human and – according to your approach – as pointless as my support for your certainty that God enjoys creating and is interested in his creations. You are making nonsense of all discussion and all language.

DAVID: So you have no authority but yourself? Adler is an authority to teach "how to think about God", his book!

dhw: I have no authority. Nor do you, Adler, Dawkins or Dennett. If God exists, the only “authority” on how to think about him is God himself. […]

DAVID: How to think about God is one side of the coin. How you imagine God is the other side, related but very different. I think you are mixing it up.

How can any human being tell us how to think about or imagine God? Why is your belief that God wants total control and has no self-interest (a) not human, and (b) the right way to think about/imagine God?

DAVID: God, as creator, had a purpose for everything He made appear!!

dhw: Of course he did, but that does not mean that he purposefully designed every single life form and ecosystem!

DAVID: A total non-sequitur. Either He designs everything, or He doesn't. Which is it?

We don’t know. If autonomous intelligence is what he wanted to design (as exemplified by our own form of designing intelligence), then how can you think/imagine he could not possibly have wanted to design cells which could also do their own form of designing by autonomously finding their own means of survival? After all, “we cannot know how God thinks”.

dhw: He may have wanted a free-for-all, and so by giving cells autonomous intelligence he would have got what he wanted. He may have wanted to create a being who would recognize him and admire his work (your terms) and may have experimented in order to get what he wanted – that is also purposeful. Or he may have set out as some humans do, to see where different experiments might lead him, and eventually have come up with a great idea: humans. Again, this is purposeful. But it doesn’t fit in with your idea of a God who knows everything and is always in full control (which is not an allegory).

DAVID: Of course, it doesn't. Purposeful at a human level of desire.

If we “cannot know how God thinks”, how can you possibly know that he knows everything and wants and always has full control? Yes, “we can imagine it is like how we do it”, and since we cannot “know” the truth, what grounds can you possibly have for imagining that his purposefulness does NOT relate to one or other of the above theories, all of which – unlike your own “imagining” - provide a logical explanation for the history of evolution?

DAVID: You can't know God's reasoning any more than I can. WE can only analyze what HE produced.

dhw: Correct. And your analysis has produced theories that make no sense to you.[…]

DAVID: I don't need to know His reasoning!!! And no one can know it.

So please stop telling us that his one and only purpose was to design us and our food, that he wanted and had full control, that he designed every life form and econiche, and all those that did not lead to us and our food were an “absolute requirement” for us and our food, although this theory makes sense only to God (i.e. not to you), but you will stick to it and reject any alternative theory that does make sense because you can’t know how he thinks or reasons!