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

by David Turell , Sunday, March 26, 2023, 17:07 (606 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: That is exactly the point you made years ago. Your doubts about why God did it that way do not negate my interpretation: He chose the method. […]

dhw: They are not doubts about why God did it that way! The doubt is WHETHER he would have chosen a method which you call messy, inefficient and cumbersome to achieve what you say was his only purpose. I suggest that either your all-powerful God did not design life for the one and only purpose of producing us and our food, or if that was his purpose, he used a method which was not messy or inefficient or cumbersome. Your only objection to my three alternatives is that your messy, inefficient and cumbersome God is less human and more godlike than one who succeeds in doing precisely what he wants to do.

Only one evolution occurred. Whether neat or messy, we are here. That is/was God's obvious prime purpose. Our individual views of God are light-years apart. But as we each stick to our views their will b e little agreement.

Abuse of language

dhw: 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.

DAVID: The words mean the same to both of us. We can debate about God in our terms, but as they apply to God they are allegorical. Pure Adler teaching!!

dhw: You specifically applied the words to God, and so long as the words mean the same to both of us, there is no point in pretending that YOU do not believe your God enjoys creating, and watches his creations with interest.

He may well.

Common descent

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: The bold shows you love to dredge up past comments, no longer applicable in this present debate.

dhw: Contrast this with your statement “my general views never change”. I am of course delighted that you finally abandoned your derogatory theory about your God’s blunders, but why should I accept a word you say now if in a few weeks’ time you are going to tell me to ignore them. This is exactly what you have done with your statements about God having thought patterns and emotions like ours, and what you are trying to do with your nonsense about “allegorical” enjoyment and interest. Why are you so dead set against the idea that, instead of your God being forced by his own invented system to design 99% of species that were irrelevant to what he wanted to design, he deliberately and successfully experimented with different life forms, either in order to find the best formula for a being spiritually in his own image, or to find out the full potential of his invention (life)?

The bold is one of the obvious distortions you constantly create. None of the 99% were irrelevant to God's purpose. Since God produced them, they were required in God's eyes. The red comment is the usual totally humanized God theory.

DAVID: A God who invented our complex universe, developed a very special Earth, then invented life is no bumbling experimenter. You constantly ignore a precisely important point I have presented over and over. God prefers to start and then evolve!!! Big Bang, then evolution to the current form of the universe. Early Earth is not what it has presently evolved into. Started life, no mean feat, and then evolved it. Patent proof God prefers using evolutionary methods.

dhw: The same old dodge. I am not denying that if he exists he used evolutionary methods! I believe evolution is historical fact! But none of this excludes the possibility that if he exists, the evolution of life – including the 99% of its non-survivors – is the history of a wonderfully successful, ongoing experiment, as opposed to the deliberate creation of an inefficient and cumbersome mess.

Thank you for defending God. God's handling of evolution was magniicent. He produced our brain!!