Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, 10:01 (772 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: We have agreed all forms of evolution will have dead ends. But our evolution enters present time with results, so the dead ends are of no consequence.

dhw: Well yes, in a few billion years time, there will be no Planet Earth! But not all past forms had dead ends, because as you keep reminding us, we and our ecosystems are here now. So what has that got to do with your belief that your God’s one and only purpose was to design us and our food, but he designed countless dead-end life forms and foods that did not lead to us? Of course past dead ends were of no consequence, which is why your theory that God designed them as “absolute requirements” for us and our food makes no sense. Stop dodging!

DAVID: An evolutionary process has dead ends Raup wrote an important book called 'Extinctions; Bad Genes or Bad Luck'. After many dead ends, we are here. We both accept that history. I view God as the designer of that history. God knows how to create and creates what is required. To advance evolution, dead ends must happen. You are again inventing a tunnel-visioned God to fit your distorted twist of history.

As usual, you have left out that part of your theory which makes your God tunnel-visioned. God sayeth unto himself: “My one and only goal is to design sapiens and his food.” (That’s the bit you left out.) “An evolutionary process hath dead ends, and therefore in order to design sapiens and his food, I must design dead ends.” And a little PS: “I knoweth not why David Turell hath made the law that I must design dead ends in order to design what I want to design, but he knoweth best.”

DAVID: Adler used the appearance of humans as proof of God. As a philosopher of religion none of your complaints bothered him. I know why. He accepted the God I accept, and you say you accept as bolded above.

dhw: We are not discussing proof of God’s existence, but your illogical theistic, anthropocentric theory of evolution!

DAVID: You miss the point. Adler used my God's 'evolution', which is what you won't accept.

You keep telling us that Adler did NOT use “your evolution”, i.e. that your God’s one and only goal was to produce sapiens plus food and therefore he “had to” produce countless dead ends that did not lead to us and our food. You keep telling us that Adler used the uniqueness of sapiens to prove the existence of God. In any case, if Adler really did support your illogical theory, that would not make it logical!

dhw: As for what I have written above, it is that if God exists, I’m sure he would have known what he was doing…..

DAVID: That is my belief. Your complaint below is an illogical mess:

dhw: ...whereas you have your God designing things that have no connection with what he wanted to do, which clearly suggests that he didn’t know what he was doing. (And to forestall your usual misdirected complaint, that is not a criticism of your God, but a criticism of your theory.)

DAVID: If God knows what He is doing, as you state, then all of evolution is His doing!

He would have known what he was doing if all of evolution was NOT of his doing (e.g. if he deliberately created a free-for-all), and if he was experimenting or getting new ideas, he would have known that he was experimenting or getting new ideas.

DAVID: Your complaint is that if He did it planning on humans to appear, He did it all wrong to get there. Back to why not use direct creation? On that point we have to ask God.

Once more, I am not criticizing your God! My complaint is that you have proposed a theory that “makes sense only to God”, which means it makes no sense to you or to me.