Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, December 05, 2022, 14:16 (717 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I've told you to recognize God created everything, and if so, God felt everything was required to be produced before arriving at humans. All of the odd doings you pick on creates the giant ecosystem that barely feeds us eight billion now. It was all connected with His goal.

You cannot tell me to “recognize” something just because you believe it! I emphatically do not recognize that your God (if he exists) would have individually designed every innovation (species), lifestyle (e.g. bird migration), strategy (the opossum playing dead), home (weaverbird’s nest, ant city) etc.[…]. And I cannot recognize your claim that all the dead ends were required for the design of us and our food. And as you yourself have repeatedly agreed, all the extinct, dead-end “odd doings” of the PAST have nothing to do with the giant ecosystem of the PRESENT.

DAVID: Your human analysis of His works is simply criticism of God.

There is no criticism of God if I question the logic of your “human” theories about what God wanted and did.

DAVID: You would down it more efficiently or invent another God to do it your way. A more clear-thinking theistic philosopher, Adler, used the evolution of humans, as created by God, proved God must exist. You simply throw out his argument with the bath water.

How many more times must I repeat that the dispute is not over the logic of the design argument as evidence for the existence of your God? Please stop dodging!

Reading God’s mind

dhw: Do you or do you not agree that the only being who knows what God is like (if he exists) is God himself?

DAVID: Yes. But a concept of an all-powerful God, as presented in the Bible is the God we MUST discuss. You forget that by presenting human Gods. Stick with the one described.

dhw: I’m amazed at your sudden devotion to the Bible. This will certainly win you favour with many Jews and Christians, but has absolutely no relevance to the illogicality of your non-biblical theory of evolution, and it does not answer any of the questions which you tell us only your God can answer.

DAVID: No, my speculations are Mine, not gospel. And gospel is group think as to what should be published, human best guesses. Just as His possible personal emotions and motives are best guesses.

So why did you suddenly decide we must discuss the God described in the Bible?

dhw: In any case, we do discuss the concept of an all-powerful God as presented in the Bible and elsewhere. And we discuss lots of other attributes, like your own certainty that he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, that he is “kindly”, and that maybe he created us because he wants us to admire his work. You are also certain that the only reason why he created all the failed dead ends was they were necessary for him to be able to design us because “all evolutions advance from failed experiments”, and this somehow confirms his all-powerfulness, because his failed experiments are not failures or experiments. Did you find this in the Bible? Thank you for agreeing that the only being who knows what God is like (if he exists) is God himself. Your personal speculations are not “gospel”.

DAVID: We do discuss the concept of all-powerful but end up with my type and your type, with no agreement between us. My all-powerful is direct, certain, and has a clear view of all desired endpoints to his actions. End points are planned, because every evolutionary process requires them, yes or no!

I‘m not sure why you have suddenly introduced end points, when the dispute is over the relevance of all the dead ends to your God’s single purpose. An end point is the completion of a process. I don’t know what you mean by every evolutionary process requires completion. Do human-made evolutions like political and philosophical and educational systems, architecture, the arts require completion? My answer is no. They have always been ongoing. As for types of God, I remain open-minded. I test each of your imposed “humanizing” attributes against the history of life and your own observations of it, and I find that if his “clear view” of his one and only purpose is us and our food, the creation of-dead end failures is the opposite of “direct”.

DAVID: Experimentation or changing his mind in mid-stream is not my all-powerful God. By definition He can't be that way, unlike your weird, weak God.

You agreed to experimentation when you insisted that “all evolutions advance from failed experiments”. If we take the example of the extinction of the dinosaurs, “changing his mind in midstream” could denote the end of “a failed experiment” (they would not lead to us), or the arrival of new ideas, which eventually might lead to us. Your own theory is that apart from the tiny minority of surviving dinosaurs (birds), the rest were dead ends that had no connection with us and our food and were therefore required for the production of us and our food, because all evolutions require failed dead ends. You don’t find that “weird”?