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

by dhw, Monday, March 27, 2023, 09:08 (390 days ago) @ dhw

PART TWO

DAVID:[…] . 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. […]

DAVID: Only one evolution occurred. Whether neat or messy, we are here. That is/was God's obvious prime purpose.

Why “prime” purpose? I’ve challenged you to tell us what other purposes you might “suppose”, and you say there are none. The fact that we are here is not obviously his one and only purpose, because it doesn’t explain why he designed 99% of life forms that had no connection with us and our food.

DAVID: Our individual views of God are light-years apart. But as we each stick to our views their will be little agreement.

So we analyse our views to see how convincing they are. Yours is that your God’s use of evolution is inefficient, cumbersome and messy, whereas mine all have him doing precisely what he wanted, without any of these derogatory characteristics.

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? […]
And:
dhw: 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.

DAVID: He may well.

Thank you. That means the theory may well be right.

Common descent

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

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DAVID: The bold shows you love to dredge up past comments, no longer applicable in this present debate.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

All ignored.

dhw: 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)?

DAVID: 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.

Required for what??? How can extinct species which were dead ends that did not lead either to us or our food have been required for the design of us and our food? Please explain why your God could not have designed us and our food if he hadn’t first designed the brontosaurus (which did NOT belong to the species which evolved into birds).

DAVID: The red comment is the usual totally humanized God theory.

Your usual silly objection to your God having thought patterns and emotions like ours, although you believe he probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours.

DAVID: […] 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! […] 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.

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

More language games: a system which you describe as an inefficient and cumbersome mess is magnificent. The three alternatives I have offered you also resulted in the human brain, but two of them were efficient experiments that produced no mess at all.