Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, March 15, 2023, 10:20 (617 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Thank you for describing how messy a mechanism evolution is. Yet God used it, and we are here.

dhw: Thank you for acknowledging that this is indeed your theory of your God’s messy, error-strewn, illogical and inefficient evolution. I have offered you three alternatives that are not messy etc., but you dismiss them all because your blunderer is apparently more godlike than my version, who does what he wants to do without any blunders.
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DAVID: You transform God into a humanized form who relies on cell committees to speciate, experiments because He is not sure of how to go forward, allows free-for-alls as another evidence of purposeless action, and likes free-for-alls as entertainment.

dhw: The free-for-all theory: He doesn’t rely on them to speciate - he designs them so that they can speciate. “Entertainment” is your choice of trivialising terminology. Our own love/enjoyment of creation, curiosity concerning what might happen if we explore the potential of our inventions, learning as we go along, finding different methods to achieve the optimum version of our goals, might all mirror what you have called his own “patterns of thought and emotions” and indeed logic.

DAVID: Once again you apply human thought to God's possible thinking pattern. I view it as trivializing God.

In your topsy-turvy theory, you humanize God to such an extent that you compare his evolution to that of our own inventions, claiming that ours consist of 99% errors, so it’s natural that his should do the same. Crazy! And you are quick enough to agree that humans would not have invented love all by themselves, so why are you so set against the possibility of other human thought patterns and emotions reflecting your creator’s nature? And why do your God’s countless “mistakes” and “failed experiments”, plus his reliance on luck, render him less human and more godlike than my versions, all of which have him creating precisely what he wants to create without any such blunders?

DAVID: "Luck" is your invention related to uncontrolled by God, environmental change. My powerful God can design for any environment that appears. It is your tunneled view of God that twists your thinking into inventing a powerless God to denigrate my theory of God.

dhw: It is you who have stated categorically that he does not control environmental changes. The theory that he can design species to survive any environment does not alter the fact that whatever species he designs at any given time must be able to live in the current conditions! He could not, in your theory, have designed humans when there was not enough oxygen for humans to breathe.

DAVID: Of course I agree God must drsign for existing environments. And of course He saw to it oxygen reached the proper level for the evolution of complex animals in the Cambrian. God provides everything necessary to advance evolution. He is in control of the factors that require control.

If he must design for existing environments over which he has no control, his scope for design is limited, and he relies on luck to provide the environmental conditions necessary for what you claim is his sole purpose – us and our food. If he “saw to it that oxygen reached the required level”, he did exercise control over the environment – unless you believe that the air we breathe is not part of the environment!!! Note the following exchange on 9th March:
dhw: You simply can’t make up your mind whether your God did or did not control the environmental changes that dictate which species survive.

DAVID: More attempts at mind reading. Environmental changes are uncontrolled.

And finally, as usual, you have glaringly omitted the fact that according to you, his lack of control over the environment led him to design 99% of organisms that were mistakes!

dhw’s – corrected to David Turell’s - obsession with ‘humans plus food’

dhw: […] please answer the following question: if evolution is over, and God needn’t step in, what do you think he is doing now? […]

DAVID: Watching. The Catholic church thinks He is still performing miracles.

Thank you. You have said evolution is over and he does not need to intervene. Why would he watch if he was not interested in what is happening? And if he is interested in what is happening, why do you find it impossible to believe that he might have created life because he wanted to watch something interesting?

DAVID: You lack an ability to properly think about God. Adler, a philosopher of religion, used our evolution as a proof of God. Any followers of Adler or similar theists would laugh at your approach.
And:
DAVID: Proof of God is an issue here in an agnostic website.

Of course it is. And so is the possible nature, purpose and method of a possible God, as illustrated by evolution, which is our subject here. You defend your illogical theistic theory against my logical (you agree) theistic alternatives on the grounds that you know how to think about God and I don’t. If he exists, only God knows how to think about God, so please don’t be so presumptuous and stick to the arguments.