Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 20, 2022, 08:33 (702 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: It is your concerned human view God used a messy process to produce us.

dhw: It’s YOUR human view. How many more times? Read your own words: “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." I have no objection to your humanising your God in this manner. You are simply accepting the first alternative I offered you, but adding terms of your own like “mistakes”, failed experiments” and “mess”, which I never used. I don't mind. Honestly. Your theory explains all the dead ends, and it keeps intact your fixed belief that we and our food were your God's one and only purpose.

DAVID: Call it a final purpose and we are done with this issue. Thank you for recognizing I still believe in God despite His choice of creation methods.

Of course you still believe in God if you believe that his final purpose was us, and that in designing us he kept messing things up, making made lots of mistakes while experimenting to achieve his final purpose.

Transferred from “More miscellany, Part One”:

DAVID: Local climates run by their own systems.

dhw: You have agreed that your God does not control local climates, and I am pointing out that local climates change environments.

DAVID: Local environment from local climate is simply local geography's weather. In that sense a very local organism will respond to it.

dhw: I see no reason to suppose that every new species suddenly appeared globally.

DAVID: I'm sure, agreeing with you, species are local. Lions in Africa, tigers in Asia.

Thank you. That is why your belief that your God did not control local climate changes (which would have changed local environments) constitutes one crucial factor in evolution which was beyond his control.

dhw: You keep insisting that your God was in full control, but local environments could change independently of him, and the survival of species for him to work on was also outside his control. It all ties in quite neatly with your theory that many of his experiments failed – the chances of his messy failures would be vastly increased by the interference of circumstances beyond his control. But, still sticking to your theory, fortunately for us, he used his luck to continue experimenting until finally he achieved what you think was his goal.

As you have not commented on this, I feel we have reached agreement, although I must admit in all honesty that of my three theistic alternatives to your original theory of evolution (the others being a God who had new ideas as he went along, and a God who wanted and designed a free-for-all, allowing for possible dabbles), experimentation is the one I like least, precisely because it lays emphasis on your God’s humanized fallibility. The third is my own favourite. But we’ve covered all the ground year after year, so I think we can leave it at that.