Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, December 13, 2022, 16:26 (709 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: What you are really saying is evolution is an inefficient, messy, cumbersome way to reach a goal. When God does it, it is all wrong. But, when it is seen as occurring naturally, it suddenly is all OK. You can't have it both ways. Your argument against God-designed evolution is completely wrong.

dhw: It is YOU who say your God-designed evolution is a mess! Read your own words: “Once God appears, He is responsible for all the messy aspects of evolution. Yes, He is. The whole of evolution is a messy process of successes and failures. And the result, us, is a most unexpected result.” By “naturally” you usually mean without God, but all three of my alternatives include God, and it is only when you make God do it your way that you end with a mess of mistakes, failures and wrong choices! There is no mess if you drop your insistence that his only goal was us and our food; or if he designed all the different life forms, moving from new idea to new idea because he enjoyed creating and was interested in what he created (your own “humanisation” of him in earlier posts); or if instead of designing them himself, he created a mechanism to provide the same ever changing variety, which was even more interesting because the results could be unexpected. No mistakes, no mess, no wrong choices. Only you insist on a mess of mistakes. Our theories do blend in with each other if we regard the dead ends as experiments undertaken in the quest to create a being with thought patterns and emotions like his own (another of your agreements later rescinded). We just have a different way of looking at this alternative: you see it negatively as a succession of failures and mistakes (you actually call them “failed experiments”, which is pejorative), whereas I find the concept of experimentation in the quest for some special creation exciting and admirable. But you prefer to stick to your all-powerful, all-knowing, always-in-control version of a God whose power, knowledge and control lead him to countless mistakes, failures, wrong choices and total mess before he finally comes up with the unexpected result he tried so incompetently to achieve from the very beginning.

You have backed into your usual corner, favoring a God who is just ss human as we are.
We both agree evolving a goal is a messy way to get there. But your approach is to forget the goal and then a wandering evolution is OK.

we obviously have two very different perceptions of how to think about God. I point out a marvelously fine-tuned universe for life, and you complain the universe is too big. I point out God evolved the universe from the Big Bang, evolved the Earth, started life and evolved it. It all reeks of purposeful action. Purposeful actions have goals. Why doesn't your God?