Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 21, 2022, 11:06 (701 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Evolution wasn't as messy as you describe, and we are here so it worked.

It is you who have used the terms “mistakes”, “failed experiments” and “messy”. I simply proposed that experimentation would account for the dead ends.

Transferred from “More miscellany, Part One”:

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Only God speciates, so He took local weather into account when necessary.

You still have him reacting to conditions beyond his control, as opposed to his being “in tight 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.

DAVID: God never needs luck, and in this scenario responded appropriately when necessary.

If suitable conditions had never arisen for humans to exist, he could never have “responded appropriately” by designing humans! Responding is reactive, and if his achievement of his goal depended on something outside his control, then clearly he was depending on chance to provide what he needed.