Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, January 28, 2023, 08:27 (663 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: There is no chance or luck involved. No matter what the climate or the competition, God can design survivors who will fit ecosystems of food and provide steps to the next stage of complexity.

Under “body heat” you wrote:

DAVID: Your distortions of the ideas I present result in denigrations of my point of view. Survival depends on luck is Raup's point. So Raup is telling us God designs well, and God surpasses the bad luck, because in my view, He can design around it.

If survival depends on luck, and God surpasses the bad luck, how can you say there is no luck involved? You have also told us your God did not control such environmental changes as forest to desert. Your belief that he is always able to design species that will survive under conditions he has not created still leaves him dependent on luck to provide the conditions under which he can design humans plus food, which you claim were his one and only aim from the beginning. And it still leaves you with your belief that 99% of the species that he designed were mistakes.

DAVID: You are using the mess system of evolution to denigrate God. God succeeded to produce us anyway, a success.

How can you accuse me of denigrating God when it is you who insist that his work was messy and 99% of his creations were mistakes and failed experiments?

DAVID: More of your humanizing concepts of God. God is God and does what He wants when He wants.

dhw: In the above I have dealt solely with YOUR concept of God! If he exists, then of course he does what he wants. That is why it makes perfect sense to assume that he WANTED the history of life with its vast variety of comings and goings, and it makes no sense at all to assume that he wanted to make mistakes and conduct failed experiments.'

DAVID: What is evolution but steps of success following steps of failure (or serious bad luck).

Thank you for acknowledging the bad luck you refused to acknowledge above. Why have you suddenly left your all-powerful God and his one and only purpose out of your argument? I keep offering you logical theistic explanations - such as a succession of new ideas, or a free for all - for the comings and goings, and also experimentation. You initially rejected the latter, but in your new theory you now support experimentation, and have added your own variation by insisting that 99% of your God’s experiments were mistakes and failures.

dhw: Why are you so afraid of the idea that God might enjoy creating all his wonders just as we enjoy creating our own wonders as well as admiring his?

DAVID: It [“allegorical”] is a term Adler insisted upon. His enjoyment is His, never ours, but in some way similar.

Pointless. Let’s rephrase the question: why are you so afraid of the idea that your God might in his own way enjoy creating his wonders?

dhw: Why are you so sure that he reasoned to himself: “In order to create what I wanner create, I gotta make millions of mistakes and conduct millions of failed experiments”? Why is this more “reasonable” than him thinking: “I sure do like the idea of creating lots of different living things, and it’ll be mighty interesting to see how my idea develops”?

DAVID: Again, you want God to be a playwright like you have been, creating life by letting His imagination drift along. I know of no theist who would accept this view.

dhw: It’s akin to Whitehead’s process theology: “God is in the process of becoming…God in his consequent nature prehends the temporal world…and in this growing and changing nature, experiences the process, knowing and loving it. […] God works like an artist attempting to win order and beauty out of opportunity.” (Oxford Dictionary of World Religions)

All ignored. I wonder how many theists believe 99% of God’s work consisted of mistakes and failed experiments, and his success depended on luck providing him with survivors and conditions that he could use to achieve is one and only purpose.

DAVID: God ended with an Earth full of successful organisms. Despite mistaken starts and stops. Success by a method that is not straight forward. Only God could do it that way.

Dinosaurs ruled the world for about 150 million years, but apparently 99% of them (only birds survived) were a mistake and a failed experiment. We’ve ruled the world for a few thousand years (and what a mess we’re making of it), so let’s wait a few more million years before we say it all “ended” with successful organisms.

Meanwhile, thank you for confirming yet again that you believe your God made mistakes. And I suggest you rephrase your last sentence: you believe that your God could only do it that way. And you prefer to ignore the possibility that what you call your God’s mistakes were in fact precisely what he wanted to design. (Discussion prolonged on “more miscellany thread”.)