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

by dhw, Tuesday, March 28, 2023, 12:57 (604 days ago) @ dhw

PART TWO

Cyclones

QUOTE: "'These blooms could be an integral part of the local marine ecosystems of our Pacific neighbours supporting higher food chains."

DAVID: These major events are not major enough for God to exert controls. They are built in to happen randomly. They do not create such a disturbance that it makes God have 'luck' in trying to design evolutionary advances. "Luck" is dhw's illogical invention. Snowball Earth destroys his point.

So he leaves integral parts of some ecosytems to luck, does he? According to you, among other uncontrolled major events affecting speciation are forests turning into deserts and asteroids causing mass extinctions. All luck, but you can't understand why "dhw somehow thinks luck is involved!" “Trying to design evolutionary advances” sounds just like experimentation to me, and the destruction of 99% by forces beyond his control sounds very much like the cause of what you once called “failed experiments” – because those designs did not lead to us and our food. You disown the expression, but it continues to explain why you call his method messy, inefficient and cumbersome.

Supernovas and biodiversity

DAVID: I declared distortions every time you produced them. [...] The most famous one is I blithely accept your theological theories as 'logical'. My statement from years ago was they were consistently logical only with a highly humanized form of God, therefore not the God I accept.

dhw: The theory that your God might have produced the 99% because he enjoyed creating them and was interested in watching them only becomes illogical if you know that he doesn’t enjoy/isn’t interested, but you are sure he does and is! No distortion. Your rejection of my other theories because you view God differently does not alter their logic, which you acknowledge fits in with the history of life! Please try again.

DAVID: As far as I am concerned, your type of God does not fit any theistic theory I have read. Your personal God is an outlier.

You were accusing me of distortion. Please stop dodging, and stop pretending that your not having read any such theory invalidates the arguments I have put to you.

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

dhw: 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 [...] doesn’t explain why he designed 99% of life forms that had no connection with us and our food.

DAVID: If you believe God chose to evolve us, it makes perfect sense. God may have other ancillary goals. I've never said 'none'.

It does not make sense that an all-powerful God would choose to design 99 irrelevant life forms out of 100. So I have asked you what other purpose he might have had for designing them. You won’t tell us, because you know that they might turn out to support theories which are different from yours. Stop dodging.

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Thank you for defending MY God.

I am not defending YOUR God. Yours is an inefficient, cumbersome, messy designer. I am proposing a God who efficiently does precisely what he wants to do.

Common descent

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

dhw: […] 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.

DAVID: I will stick to what Adler taught me. Any description of God must be allegorical.

Meaningless. Yesterday, in reply to my saying “there is no point in pretending that YOU do not believe your God enjoys creating, and watches his creations with interest”, your honest reply was “He may well”. In which case, one of my theories concerning his purpose may well be right.

DAVID: […] God's handling of evolution was magniicent. He produced our brain!!

dhw: 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.

DAVID: A real 'theistic' God does not need experimentation. He knows what He wants to produce and produces it directly.

Except that he did NOT directly produce what you believe to have been his one and only purpose. You never stop contradicting yourself.