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

by dhw, Saturday, March 25, 2023, 08:09 (607 days ago) @ dhw

PART TWO

DAVID: in my view God is in total control of what has to be controlled for God to continue evolving more and more life. Snowball Earth is proof enough.

dhw: Another vague generalization which avoids the subject of our dispute: Why “more and more life”, if 99% of it was irrelevant to what you claim was his one and only purpose?

DAVID: Again you refuse to accept evolution for the process it actually is. The losses are required in any screening process!!
And later:
DAVID: […] evolution is a continuum in which the present forms are built from past discarded forms. How else does evolution work? Describe your invention

How many other of your God’s evolutions of life do you know about? If he is the creator of all things, he invented the evolutionary process that resulted in every life form that ever existed on Earth. But why would an all-powerful God have invented a method that forced him to deliberately design species of which 99 out of 100 were irrelevant to what you say was his purpose? The answer should be that he would not have done so, and therefore your “suppositions” concerning either his purpose or his method could be wrong! How does evolution work? Present forms are built from the 1% of survivors from the past, e.g. one small group of dinosaurs evolved into the birds we know today, whereas all other dinosaurs were dead ends that did not lead to any of the life forms that exist today. “Screening” is the obvious process we call “natural selection”, which removes organs and organisms that cannot adapt to new conditions.

Abuse of language

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

DAVID: I allegorically meant exactly what I wrote.

dhw: 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?

DAVID: I'm following Adler's instructions on how to think about God. It is a whole short book.

dhw: Please stop hiding behind Adler. You are sure your God enjoys creating and watches his creations with interest, and you know perfectly well what those words mean.

DAVID: I will not stop quoting Adler, my mentor in how to think about God. You exhibit no such guidance.

If you tell me you are sure your God enjoys creating and watches his creations with interest, why on earth should I accept your claim that these words don’t mean what you and I think they mean because Adler tells you how to think about God? Why do you make such statements about God if the words don’t mean what you say? You are making a mockery of language.

Common descent

dhw: Why would your all-powerful, all-knowing God, who apparently knew from the very beginning exactly what biochemistry and environment were required to fulfil his one and only goal (us and our food), have needed to “develop advanced biochemistry” and to subject himself to the limitations of environmental changes beyond his control? Could you possibly mean that he was learning more and more about how to use biochemistry as he “developed” it through his ongoing experiments? According to you, the Cambrian proved that he could create our ancestors from scratch. He didn’t need to design any of the species that preceded us. […]

DAVID: […] An all-knowing God does not need experimentation. More evidence you don't know how to think about God.

Of course an all-knowing God doesn’t need experimentation! But since experimentation would explain why he deliberately created the 99% of life forms which do not fit in with your suppositions about his purpose and his method, we are faced with the possibility that he is NOT all-knowing, and created those forms during a process of learning how to fulfil the purpose you impose on him, or of finding out the full potential of what he had invented. You yourself actually called the 99% “failed experiments” when you were promoting the theory that your marvellous designer blundered from one mistake to another with his faulty designs.