Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, February 08, 2023, 16:55 (442 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: 1) God chose to evolve us for His own reasons. We cannot fathom them.

dhw: It is your theory that your God chose to make mistake after mistake, and it is you who cannot fathom a single reason why he would have done so. Maybe your theory is wrong!

Don't you understand 'for His own reasons'?

dhw: 2) How do his mistakes and failures make him less human and more godlike than a God who – in my theistic alternatives - achieves his purpose without making any mistakes?

DAVID: My God is a totally different person than dhw proposes in his 'weak' God proposals. Mine is very purposeful, knows exactly what He is doing always. He needs no excuses for the messy way to evolve, because he considered that the required/best way.

dhw: We cannot read your God’s thoughts, but you happen to know he thought (considered) the best way to achieve his purpose was to make mistake after mistake, failed experiment after failed experiment. This makes him strong, whereas in my proposals he knows exactly what he wants and designs it without any mistakes, and that apparently makes him weak.

Your God is given surrogate ways of producing evolution as if His hands don't touch the process.

I shan’t repeat my three alternatives. Your comment on them is:

DAVID: A tortured distortion of the straightforward approach. God produced the evolutionary process we see.

dhw: All of my proposals produce the evolutionary process we see. I have no idea why you consider a process entailing your God’s producing a 99% failure rate to be more straightforward than your God using processes which entail no failures.

Suddenly a 99.9% failure rate disappears into a concocted theory that God has hands off.

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DAVID: For example, my God never needs to discover new ideas. He has A full plan from the beginning, and carries it out despite full control over environment.

dhw: According to you, his full plan consists of 99% mistakes, and he does NOT have full control over the environment, which is why he can only design species that fit in with conditions at the time – a major reason for his mistakes.

What don't you understand about a God who can design for any conditions? Severe environments don't stop God from working designs as below:

Extremophiles

DAVID: Living organisms can find many different ways to live. Adverse climates can be conquered by living organisms. It explains why God does not have to control all climates as dhw worries. God's supreme design of living organisms takes care of it.

dhw: But that does not explain why, if your God’s only purpose was to design us and our food, he designed 99% of organisms which had no connection with us and our food.

DAVID: The 99% failures evolved our existing food!!! That is the blank spot in your thinking.

dhw:This is getting ridiculous. You have agreed over and over again that the 99% did not evolve into anything – they were dead ends! If they had evolved into our current food, they would not have been mistakes/ failures!

You have lost the concept of evolution completely. What cannot continue to survive sets the conditions necessary for new attempts. Evolution is a progression of simple forms to more complexity of forms. Failoure drives the process, per Raup.

DAVID: Living organisms can find many different ways to live. Adverse climates can be conqured by living organisms. It explains why God does not have to control all climates as dhw worries. God's supreme design of living organisms takes care of it.

dhw: Apply your comment to "cellular intelligence" instead of "living organisms", as means of finding their own “different ways to live” or to “conquer adverse climates”, and you will see how perfectly it fits

DAVID: Cells which manufacture products intelligently at high speed do not have the design intelligence to create new forms. You have an invented theory of no substance. Except for Shapiro's unsupported conjecture there has been no other response to him. Bacterial ability to edit DNA is not seen in more developed organisms.

dhw: Please stop pretending that Shapiro is the only scientist to believe that cells are intelligent. You have said that “adverse climates can be conquered by living organisms”. Extremophiles prove your point. Yes, they find different ways to live. Why must your God find their ways for them? Is every extremophile an absolute requirement for us and our food? Or one of your God's 99% mistakes?

Please remember evolution works from a failure to survive, so the next stage overcomes the past deficiencies. Most dinosaurs disappeared but are still here as birds!!!