Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, September 26, 2022, 08:39 (787 days ago) @ David Turell

Nature of God

DAVID: God may create and not need self-enjoyment or self-interest in what He has created.

dhw: If you enjoy something, it means you get pleasure from it. You have said you are sure your God gets pleasure from creating. What is "self-enjoyment"? Do you mean your God doesn't need to masturbate? “Self-interest” means that you only care about yourself and do not care about anyone else – nothing whatsoever to do with paying attention to something because you want to know what will happen to it, what it will do or become or create or show you or teach you etc.

DAVID: You are attempting to apply human terms directly to God. Since He is not human. they have to be applied understanding the difference in Him.

It is you who apply “human” terms when you claim that he has full control, that he enjoys creating and that he is interested in what he creates, and now you are pretending you don’t know if the terms mean what you think they mean! Please stop playing silly word games.

dhw: Do you disagree that the only being qualified to tell us how to think about/imagine God is God himself, if he exists? […]

DAVID: God is discussed all the time, despite your negative take. Log on to Ed Feser.

Of course he is discussed all the time. Hundreds of books have been written about him. Do they all say the same thing? Now please answer the question above.

Design and purpose

dhw: […] if your God wanted to create autonomous humans, why do you insist that he could not possibly have wanted to create autonomous cells? The principle is the same: he did not WANT to control humans. So maybe he did not WANT to control cells..

DAVID: No good designer wants secondhand design. Cells can be viewed as automatons.

And cells, as we know from some eminent scientists, can be viewed as autonomously intelligent entities, and if your God designed them as such because he WANTED a free-for-all, who are you to say he is not a good designer? In your own theory, he only WANTS to create H. sapiens plus food, but before he does so, he designs countless dead-end species and foods that have no connection with his one and only purpose. Is that what you call a “good” designer?

DAVID: You are confused: what makes sense only to God are His reasons for choosing to evolve everything, nothing more. I have established the historical facts that support that theory.

dhw: We both support the theory that evolution happened, and I suspect there have been scientists before you who established the historical facts that support the theory of evolution. But (a), (b) and (c) are not facts, and they contradict one another. And you have said that you can’t explain the contradictions – God has his reasons and we can’t know them!

DAVID: Once again, the only reasons I cannot know is why God chooses to evolve everything. Why do you expand my statement to so much nonsense about God?

Thank you for agreeing that it is nonsense to claim that your all-powerful God had only one purpose and therefore designed (“evolved”) countless life forms and ecosystems that had no connection with his purpose.

DAVID: As for the Cambrian, a designer can jump steps whenever He wishes.

dhw: Of course, but according to you, we and much of our food are directly descended from organisms that God chose to design without precursors, and this contradicts your belief that we and our food were his sole purpose right from the start. And so you tell us that your theory “makes sense only to God”.

DAVID: Same nonsense, same non sequitur. All of the past leads to the present. Stop slicing the past away.

Some past forms have led to present forms, but you have agreed that the past is full of dead ends that have led nowhere. Thank you for agreeing that it is nonsense to claim that we are descended from organisms that had no precursors (i.e. that did not evolve), and yet we were your all-knowing, all-powerful, can-do-whatever-he-wishes God’s one and only purpose from the very beginning of evolution.

DAVID: As for God's purpose to produce humans, the presence of human is used to prove God in that natural evolution is not capable of producing us.

dhw: So are you now saying that “natural evolution” (by which I presume you mean evolution that is not controlled by your God, though control may not mean control) IS capable of producing trilobites, dinosaurs, moas and elephants? All of them can be used to “prove” that God exists, and that is not the point at issue. You simply use it in order to dodge all the contradictions I have listed.

DAVID: More confusion. None of the animals you mention have human mental capacity! The contradictions are manufactured by you.

But (a) you have quite rightly argued that ALL the complexities of life can be used as evidence of God’s existence, and (b) we are not discussing God’s existence here. We are discussing your theistic interpretation of evolution, which is riddled with the contradictions I have listed over and over again, and to which you reply that we cannot know God’s reasons, and your theories “make sense only to God.”