Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, December 09, 2022, 17:41 (503 days ago) @ dhw

This thread and “More Miscellany” Part One deal with the same issues, so I have combined and edited the exchanges,

dhw: The definition does not say that things "have to" disappear or that disappearing forms are required! It is simply a fact that they disappear! (Raup says it’s all a matter of bad luck, which doesn’t say much for your God’s total control, does it?) The “improved models” are the life forms that DID evolve from earlier life forms. The dead ends are the ones that did NOT evolve into anything. But you have your God specially designing all the forms that did NOT evolve into the only forms he wants to design. Why? Apparently so that he could make them disappear because all evolutions must have dead ends, and he found that his own “failed experiments” were cluttering up the available space!

What you complain about is actual evolutionary history. I say God created it in order to produce humans. You accept descent with modification, the same evolution in question here. So when I say God did it with purpose, suddenly evolution is filled with all sorts of mistakes. What a crazy complaint! OK with Darwin, but not if God had a hand in it.

(I removed the repetitious discussion, but more below:)

https://massivesci.com/articles/evolving-toward-extinction/
QUOTES: "It’s easy to view the progress of evolutionary selection as one-directional – leading toward ever more refined and useful traits. In Darwin’s words, “natural selection will tend to render the organization of each being more specialized and perfect, and in this sense higher.
"But nature does not always make the right choices. Sometimes those choices lead to evolutionary dead ends."

dhw: The above quote could hardly be clearer. You believe your God specially designed all the dead ends. So in your theory we must substitute the word “God” for the word “nature”: God does not always make the right choices. Sometimes those choices lead to evolutionary dead ends. Your all-powerful but oh so “humanized” God makes the wrong choices – in keeping with your other faux pas, when you told us that “all evolutions advance from failed experiments”, but then backtracked to tell us that there were no failures and no experiments in your God's totally controlled direction of evolution.

DAVID: Yes, God totally controlled evolution which always will produce dead ends.

dhw: If your God controlled it, then you are telling us that he actually wanted to make wrong choices!

No, He knew there would be failed forms due to bad luck

dhw: I do not know of any evolution in which designers deliberately set out to create failures, as you seem to think your God did.

DAVID: I view God as deliberately deciding to evolve us.

dhw: And deliberately deciding to evolve (= design) every other life form that ever lived, including all his wrong choices, which he wanted to make because all evolutions produce dead ends aka failed experiments aka wrong choices.

See above: we are viewing one evolutionary process from history. Darwin proposed it as naturally occurring and what happened is accepted by you. When I say God designed it, it suddenly has all sorts of errors. It is the SAME!! from differing viewpoints.

***

dhw: That is certainly part of the process, but it has nothing to do with your theory that your God deliberately designs failures.

DAVID: Whatever appears is God's intent. We appeared at the end of evolution. Ergo, we were His final intent. Again you turn Adler's argument on its head.

dhw: Adler used human uniqueness to prove the existence of God. This has nothing to do with your theory of evolution.

Adler made a major point that Darwin evolution occurred naturally and when humans appeared, comparing them to past organisms, they were so highly unusual, chance and natural selection could not have produced them.

dhw: I doubt if the next billion years or so will see no changes in the history of life on Earth, but in any case, your claim is that we and our food were your all-powerful, in-total-control God’s one and only intent from the very beginning, and so yet again, why design all the dead ends? You either dodge the question, or come up with answers like the one I have bolded at the start of this thread, or with the advice that I should go and ask God because your theories make sense only to him.

I don't dodge. You have completely distorted the discussion by accepting Darwin evolution as is (with a qualification about chance mutation) but discovering all sorts of errors if God did it with purpose. So, God's purpose makes evolution suddenly all wrong? We are discussing one form of evolution, the one in history. This all relates to your question about God, noting a direct creation is more efficient. A truism, but God did not take your advice. He used a designed evolutionary system suddenly filled with errors in His judgement. Where were the errors when you were a happy Darwinist, before we met.??? I don't dodge, but it is difficult to follow your reasoning about God, since you view Him as very humanized in thought pattern.