Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, October 21, 2022, 13:32 (552 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I didn't say 'all outcomes', you did! God has goals and knows how to reach them does not imply God knows my thoughts in the next month. Stop distorting.

hw: Your exact words were: “Everything He created is required and He knows all outcomes as He evolves creations.”

DAVID: I'm sorry you misunderstood: my point was God knew each physical outcome/phenotypic result.

Apologies for the misunderstanding, but this could be even more interesting. By giving us free will, your God sacrifices control of his creations, even giving us the ability to destroy them all. So you can believe in a free-for-all of which he does not know the outcome (humans controlling the world), but you can’t believe in a free-for-all of which he does not know the outcome (life forms designing their own means of survival in a constantly changing world). I wonder why your otherwise all-knowing God didn’t want to know what we humans would do while he watches us with interest.

dhw: The dispute is over your belief that in order to design sapiens plus food, he “had to” design countless dead ends that had no connection with sapiens plus food. This is what makes no sense.

DAVID: Please think! To evolve humans required 3.8 billion years and many necessary ecosystems along the way. The dead ends.

Please think! Dead ends do not lead anywhere and were NOT necessary if your God’s sole purpose was to design us and our food!

DAVID: His choice of using an evolutionary process makes sense to Him.

If God exists, then of course evolution was his choice! What does not make sense is that you say his sole purpose in creating countless dead ends which had no connection with us was to create us and our food.

DAVID: Ecosystems throughout evolution supported the very process of evolution.

Of course every ecosystem supported every life form of which it was composed, including all those that had no connection with us and our food. Please stop stating the obvious, as if it justified your illogical theory.

DAVID: You still don't like the idea God chose to evolve us. ..

I have no objection to the fact that we evolved, or to the theory that if God exists, he chose to evolve us! My objection is to the illogical theory bolded above, which you keep dodging! I have offered you three logical theistic alternatives to explain the facts of history, but you reject them on the grounds that they suggest human thought patterns different from those you want him to have.

DAVID: ...Fine. Let's imagine direct creation of humans. They must have food you'll agree. The giant bush of evolution would need to be produced in a Big Bang of immediate creation for the proper supporting ecosystem.

According to you, that is precisely what he did during the Cambrian Explosion, and you even go so far as to specify that we ourselves and the animals we eat descended from those life forms, which had no predecessors. Your view of the Cambrian completely contradicts your theory that every pre-Cambrian life form and ecosystem was “necessary” to produce us (plus our food).

dhw: The free-for-all alternative means that he doesn’t WANT to have control. The other alternatives allow for control. Your own version, in your own words, which are well worth repeating in full, is a humanized, “tunnel-visioned bumbler who creates lots of unnecessary organisms on the way to His desired outcome, humans.” I could not have expressed it better myself.

DAVID: Don't turn my words on me. That was a derisive version of the type of God you turn my God into with your irrational distorted view of a God who chooses to evolve humans.

According to you, your God had only one purpose, and all his past actions were devoted to its fulfilment, although most of them did not lead to its fulfilment. That is tunnel vision, and his dead-end actions can only mean that he is a bumbler (or bungler) – i.e. he was confused and didn’t know what he was doing. I would not subscribe to such a derogatory view of your God, but apparently you do!

DAVID (under “Current and expected population”): Eleven billion and then decline is an interesting concept. All depends on birth rate couples decide upon. The is the 'humans plus food' dhw rales about.
And:
DAVID: (under “ecosystems mapped): dhw's complaint about 'humans and food' underscores his lack of appreciation of the attendant problem with meddling before learning of the issues.

These comments are becoming sillier and sillier. I am just as aware as you that we need food, our population is huge, ecosystems are dependent on balance, and we are destroying our own ecosystems. So please stop pretending that my “complaint” concerns these self-evident, deeply disturbing truths, and please stop using them as a diversionary tactic to avoid the illogicality of your theories of evolution, bolded above, which you admit “make sense only to God” and therefore not to you.