Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, January 20, 2023, 11:14 (671 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] God’s talent for adapting his designs to whatever conditions chance imposes on him does not fit in with an all-powerful God having only one purpose and knowing exactly how to achieve it. However, it does fit in perfectly with the concept of a God who enjoys creating and has new ideas as he goes along.

DAVID: If God is really a human.

dhw: How can a God who creates universes be a human? If he exists, there is no reason at all why – as you agreed in the past – he should not have certain thought patterns and emotions and logic in common with the being you believe he created (us). You yourself endow him with human qualities (e.g. kindness, enjoyment of creating and interest in his creations) and frailties (making mistakes, conducting failed experiments).

DAVID: I won't accept that necessary endpoints, which you call, and I agree are failures, are terrible results. 99% of all species have failed in the past. God ran the system successfully. We are here and God is not weak, bumbling, or stupid: He chose the system warts and all and made it achieve His goals. Perhaps it is the only system that would work.

You attacked my alternative theories on the grounds that they made God human. I have answered that criticism above. Your response changes the subject, and is full of inaccuracies. It is you who call the 99% of experiments failures. I have never mentioned “necessary endpoints”, and I don’t know what you are referring to. Anything necessary is not a failure or mistake. It is you who insist that your God set out to create us and our food, and proceeded to specially design all the life forms, 99% of which had no connection with his goal. That makes him weak and bumbling. In two of my alternatives, a) his experiments are successful and he continues to develop them in his quest to create a being like himself (plus food), or (b) he gets new ideas as he goes along. No failures, no bumbling. You dismiss them because you say they humanise him. Hence my first comment above and my next question:

dhw: Why is it less “human” to achieve a goal despite lack of control of conditions, and despite countless mess-ups, mistakes and failed experiments, than it is to achieve a goal without making any mistakes or conducting any failed experiments?

DAVID: Stil pursuing a humanistic God who experiments with no goal in mind. If we assume God is totally in charge, we have to accept the history of evolution in an honest way. It is not a direct approach. It takes time and 99% of all forms disappear. That God chose this way does not make any lesser of a God. IMHO your twisted theories of God produce a God very few religious folk would accept.

And so you continue to dodge the question. In my first theory, his goal is the same as yours – to create a being with thought patterns, emotions etc. like his own (though you refuse to accept any thought patterns if they differ from your rigid preconceptions); in the second he experiments on a journey of discovery – he invents life to see what he can do with it. There are many human equivalents of this process, and it is a goal in itself. A free-for-all is similar – to see what will happen if he invents a mechanism that can do its own designing. In none of these alternatives does your God make mistakes, make a mess, fail, make wrong decisions. IMHO your twisted theory of a bumbling God who makes mistake after mistake is one that “very few religious folk would accept.”