Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, February 16, 2023, 08:17 (433 days ago) @ David Turell

Evolving a universe for life

DAVID: Isn't it obvious evolution is a convoluted series of experimental forms? Your three theories result in God being a wimp, a secondhand designer who experiments and changes His mind or course as belowe frpm prevously:

dhw: If God exists, I have myself suggested that evolution is a convoluted series of experimental forms, but none of my three theories [summarized again below] have him changing his mind or his course. […] Contrast this with your own theory: a blundering God whose work consists of 99% mistakes, failed experiments, wrong choices, responsible for what you regard as a mess, and reliant on luck to provide him with the conditions that will enable him to design the only life forms he actually wants to design.

DAVID: All three versions of your progressing God simply accept God learns. What happened to the all-knowing God who knew exactly what He is doing?

Your disapproval of my theories provides no defence for your own almost blasphemous theory bolded above. God experimenting in order to design a being in his own image (as the OT puts it), or exploring different uses of his invention of life directly (through experiments) or indirectly (through a free-for-all), does not in my view make him a wimp and does not have him changing his mind or course. I see no reason why – if we are in his image (OT term) – he should not WANT to occupy himself by inventing and discovering new things. In all three cases, he knows exactly what he is doing – experimenting and discovering and learning. This means he is not all-knowing, but I don't know why you think this makes him a wimp. More to the point, he is not the great blunderer of your theory, who in his all-knowingness knows he's making blunders but still goes ahead, as bolded above.

DAVID: Did He experiment in making the universe? Our knowledge of it shows that the process of that evolution was quite direct. When God started life, it functioned at basic levels without problems, quickly evolving. Your magic brilliant cell reappears, all extrapolated theory, no support in current research onautomatic cell functions at the molecular level.

If his sole aim was to produce us and our food, I don’t know how you can say the process was “direct”, and why are you ignoring your own fixed belief that 99% of the unproblematic products were mistakes/failed experiments/wrong choices? None of this ties in with your blundering, mistake-ridden, luck-dependent theory as bolded above.

DAVID: You have a totally blundering idea of my God, twisted by your preconceptions of how to think about God as theistic philosophers do. Why don't you investigate their thinking?

dhw: Please tell us which parts of my bolded summary above are not applicable to your idea of your God. And I’d be interested to know which theistic philosophers support it.

DAVID: Those in ID!!

Again: Please tell me which parts of my bolded summary are inaccurate. And please tell me which ID-ers have proposed the view of a blundering God bolded above.

DAVID: No luck. God can design for any set of conditions as necessary. How can you contradict His success, us?

dhw:[…]. If he has no control over conditions, he can ONLY design life forms that fit in with those conditions. But since those conditions are not suitable for us and our food, he is forced to design life forms that have no connection with us and our food, and that is why you call them mistakes and failed experiments.

DAVID: How do you know what God designs in response to environmental conditions do not feed us??? You are off on a weird tangent. Don't be stuck on extremophiles in your thinking. Teh misaksv are failure to survive by bad luck, per Raup.

How can the 99% of past dead ends feed us? Failure to survive does not mean mistakes or failed experiments. In your theory, non-survival is bad luck for the 99% because your God’s designs were faulty, but they are failures/mistakes because they did not lead to your God’s one and only purpose - us and our food.

DAVID: I'm referring to the powerful God of the OT. He is my God.

dhw: The OT does not present us with a powerful God who has no control over the environment, and makes millions of mistakes on his way to evolving multiple homos and hominins which eventually lead to Adam and Eve.

DAVID: No, it has a very powerful God who can do anything He wants. I've brought Him into modern knowledge and applied Him to it.

dhw: I’m all in favour of a God who can do anything he wants. I had no idea that modern knowledge had proved that the all-powerful OT God was forced by his lack of control into a messy process of evolution which caused him to conduct 99% of failed experiments, mistakes, wrong choices etc. before he was at last able to design Adam and Eve and their breakfast.

DAVID: If your God can do anything He wants why do you present Him as a progressive wimp?

I do not regard wanting to create or learn something new as wimpish. If he could do anything he wanted, why did your God make 99% of mistakes and failed experiments and wrong choices etc. in trying to produce the only thing he wanted (us and our food)?