Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, November 18, 2022, 12:00 (519 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You don't approach history from my standpoint at all. I accept the history of evolution is God's creation.

dhw: If God exists, then we will all have to accept that, but the history is of countless life forms which have come and gone. It is not history that your God designed each one individually, or that his only purpose was to design us plus food, or that all the dead ends were necessary for the design of humans plus food!

DAVID: Of course God is not historical!!! But my belief is God created everything and my views as stated starts with that fact.

All these discussions start with “if God exists”, and the dispute is over your illogical combination of theories now bolded above, describing a God who specially designs dead ends that have no connection with his one and only purpose.

dhw: A God in full control of everything would know just how to design what he wanted to design. But thank you for endorsing my second theory, which explains all the dead ends as being due to his experimenting (trying different approaches) in order to find the best one. At last you are beginning to open your mind to my logical theistic alternatives.

DAVID: The bold is correct. The rest is your flannel. My comment above was from the human level of design which is what I thought was your level of discussion. To be quite clear: in my designing I had to look at alternatives; God is direct and knows exactly how to proceed with no alternative experimentations.

dhw: This is the most ridiculous of your dodges so far! The point at issue is the dead ends, i.e those branches of evolution which did not lead to your God’s one and only purpose of sapiens plus food but which you tell us he had to design because “all evolution has branches that lead to dead ends as types of individuals don’t survive and the ecosystems they support stop”.

DAVID: Above I explain I misunderstood the level of discussion of design at human level, not God level, and then you jump all over me as 'dodging'.

The subject is dead ends, as explained above. You agree that a God in full control would know how to design what he wanted to design. When I pointed out the illogicality of an all-knowing God designing countless life forms that had no connection with those he wanted to design, you told me I didn’t understand design theory. Why did you mention design theory if it was not meant to explain what I didn’t understand? It turns out that design theory entails experimentation – one of the three alternatives I have suggested as explanations for the dead ends! And so you promptly tell us that God does not experiment but is “direct”! Back we go: If he is “direct”, how do you explain all the dead ends?

DAVID: Yes, He is direct in designing a new form and directly designs each step of evolution. Accept, in my view, He formed every step from Archaea to humans.

And so you start dodging again! Every “new form” which he is “direct in designing” includes all those new forms that were NOT steps from Archaea to humans plus our food – the dead ends which you cannot explain! Your view of design theory provides an explanation: experimentation, but apparently you only mentioned my lack of understanding design theory because although design theory confirms one of my own theories, it has nothing to do with God’s unknown reason for directly designing the dead ends! (Sadly, the dodging continues on the “More miscellany” thread.)