Return to David's theory of evolution PART ONE (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, March 23, 2023, 08:56 (394 days ago) @ David Turell

PART ONE

DAVID: Please note I have changed my descriptive approach. What, on the surface, looks like mistakes and failures is actually planned limited adaptability. Thus, neat planning.

dhw: So you are indeed now withdrawing your vehement criticism of an inefficient God who blunders from one mistake to another. At last. We are therefore left with the theory that he deliberately designed the 99% of life forms which did not lead to his one and only purpose, and deliberately designed them in such a way that they would not survive. Why might he have done that? We agree that he would not have done anything he didn’t want to do, so he must have had a reason. And by your own admission, you can’t think of one. I have offered you three possible explanations which fit in with your new theory that your God did not after all blunder into one mistake after another. Perhaps you will take at least one of them more seriously.

dhw: You prefer to ignore all of this, which is understandable because it doesn’t make sense to you and you have no answers. [...]

DAVID: I'm tired of giving essentially the same answer when you bring up your humanized God and His weak way of acting. God is highly purposeful and direct in action to reach His perceived goals. He never needs outside help.

There is no disagreement between us. If God exists, of course he will be highly purposeful and direct in action to reach his perceived goals. Yet again, you have changed singular to plural goals, although you insist that his one and only goal was to design us and our food. You always revert to these vague generalizations as means of dodging the illogicality of your theories. You insist that he directly created 100% of species, 99% of which had no connection with the one goal you impose on him. And you insist that this theory is the only possible truth, although only God knows why he would use what you agree is a messy, inefficient and cumbersome method.

dhw: So your theory now is that all 99% of life forms irrelevant to his purpose were easily designed in response to environmental conditions over which he had no control, but you simply don’t know why he bothered to design them, and then all of a sudden he realized that he needed more oxygen to fulfil his one and only purpose, so he did design this particular environment (the Cambrian), though he still carried on designing lots and lots of life forms that had no connection with his one and only purpose).

DAVID: A perfect description of how messy evolution was. God chose this mechanism for His own reasons. Easy to understand, as His choice.

What is easy to understand? You can’t explain why an all-powerful, all-knowing God would choose (= invent) such a messy method to achieve his goal! Maybe that wasn’t his goal, or maybe that wasn’t his method. There are other possible explanations for the 99% of extinct creations, but you just happen to know that your God thinks in the same muddled way as you do, and this makes him more godlike than a God who has perfectly understandable reasons for creating everything that he creates.

DAVID: As for your snide oxygen remark, God knew well in advance it would be needed.

The snide remark concerns your theory that your God did not control environmental changes, but when I point out that this means he relied on luck, suddenly he starts controlling the environment.

dhw: […] One moment he watches with interest, and the next moment the words mean he’s not interested..

DAVID: […] Adler describes at length how to think about God when our terms cannot be exactly applied to God, thus allegory.

dhw: Nobody can possibly know what terms can or can't be applied to God - that is why we have different theories. But we know what WE mean, so please tell us what YOU meant when you said you were sure he enjoys creating (otherwise he wouldn’t have done it) and watches us with interest if you didn't mean that he actually likes creating, and he actually observes us and wants to know what we're doing.

DAVID: I allegorically meant exactly what I wrote.

What do the words “enjoy”, “watch” and “interest” symbolize? The word “allegorically” is meaningless in this context, and you know it. Yes, you meant what you said, just as you meant what you said when you wrote that your God probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours. And why wouldn’t he? Why should he NOT create beings which in certain ways will be in his own image – especially if, as you once suggested, he wants us to admire his work and have a relationship with him?