Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, December 02, 2022, 13:04 (720 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: No experimentation ever needed. Species are created/designed to fit a purpose at a given level but then species ends are required for evolution to proceed to the next more complex level. All planned by God.

dhw: “All evolutions advance from failed experiments” but no experiments are ever needed. Your logic is becoming curiouser and curiouser. If your God’s only purpose was to design us plus our food, then the only species that were “required” were those that led to us plus our food. The countless species that did not lead to us plus our food were what we have called the dead ends. They were not required for evolution to lead to us plus our food. Yes or no?

DAVID: God plans everything. The dead ends are part of His designed evolution.

Never a straight answer. I‘m splitting up your non-reply because it is a series of non sequiturs, each of which is a contradiction in itself. Firstly, your God specially designs dead ends that have no connection with his one and only purpose because “all evolutions advance from failed experiments”, but no experiments are needed, and later we will learn that the failures were not failures because they were designed to be failures.

DAVID: When organisms are no longer needed to supply food, they disappear.

Organisms disappear because they can’t get food, not because no other organism wants to eat them!

DAVID: Raup called extinctions bad luck, not a failure to survive.

Extinction MEANS failure to survive! Of course this may be the result of bad luck. According to you, it’s their bad luck that God specially designed them because he wanted them to fail to lead to his one and only purpose – presumably in order to prove your theory that all evolution advances from failed experiments, though he doesn’t experiment and doesn’t fail.

DAVID: So, YES!!! Life lives on eating life. Again, dog-eating-dog world must be.

A totally irrelevant conclusion to a discussion on why your God specially designed countless organisms that had nothing to do with his one and only purpose.

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DAVID: Not my God who would never do what you claim for Him.

dhw: Your rigid vision of what your God would and wouldn’t do does not entitle you to say that my different visions make me into a would-be atheist.

DAVID: What I receive from you comes across as more atheist than agnostic.

I propose that your God may have had logical reasons for actions which you cannot explain. I offer you three alternatives, and that comes across as atheistic.

dhw: A God who experiments or gets new ideas or designs a free-for-all is no more illogical than an all-powerful God who has one purpose and deliberately designs countless failures that have no connection with his one purpose.

DAVID: Designed disappearance is not a failure, but a required part of the plan's design.

Elsewhere you have screamed at me: “Don’t you recognize evolution must have failures?” So a failure is not a failure if it is designed to fail. Why must evolution have failures? Because apparently “all dead ends are of equal importance as examples of how any form of evolution works.” So it seems that God designed his failures to prove your theory that evolution must produce failures if it is to succeed. However, on another occasion when I asked you to explain your God’s possible reasons for specially designing failures, you replied: “When you finally find out God’s reasoning, tell me and the whole world!” I prefer this acknowledgement that your theories “make sense only to God”, i.e. not to you. At least it makes sense that your inexplicable theories do not make sense to you!

Reading God’s mind

QUOTE: “But that is not what God is like, given that he is eternal or outside time, and that he is omniscient and doesn’t have to “figure things out” through some kind of reasoning process." (David’s bold)

This is the same intellectual arrogance as that of Richard Dawkins (who calls God a “delusion”), which first spurred me into writing the “brief guide” and setting up this website. Nobody "knows" whether God exists or doesn't exist, and nobody "knows" what God is like if he does exist.

DAVID: note the bolded comments that many people have their own version of God. The message here is there is only one theistic accepted version of God, as described. I strongly agree with this description of God's attributes. dhw please note.

Accepted by whom? How dare anyone say that their version is correct and anyone who disagrees is wrong? That is the basis of all the destructive religious prejudices that have done so much damage to human society throughout history. Again: The only being who knows what God is like is God himself, if he exists. (My bold)