Return to David's theory of evolution PARTS ONE & TWO (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 05, 2023, 10:58 (596 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: As a believer I simply accept what God did without your skepticism.

dhw: No you don’t. You simply accept your own totally illogical theory about what your God did and why he did it.

DAVID: No you don't. Simple logic. God as creator produced humans by evolution.

If God exists, then for those of us who believe in evolution, of course he produced humans and every other organism by evolution, either directly or indirectly. How does that explain your theory that we were his one and only goal, and therefore he designed 99 out of 100 species that had nothing to do with his goal? Stop dodging!

DAVID: Experimentation means at the beginning God didn't know how to reach His goals. Not like any all-knowing God as described. My God knows from the beginning.

dhw: You’ve got it! Your God knows from the beginning, and so you have absolutely no idea why he would have designed countless life forms that had no connection with his one and only goal. It doesn’t make sense. So according to you, your God is an inefficient, cumbersome and messy designer. Alternatively, his one and only goal was not us and our food, and there are logical reasons for the 99%, or if we were his goal, he is not all-knowing but is a learning God who experiments. Progress at last!

DAVID: I understand your humanized God. My God needs no experimentation. He evolves us just as history shows.

As above, history shows that we and ALL our fellow creatures evolved. What you can’t explain is why your God would have designed the irrelevant 99%, and you ignore the logic of my own explanations on the grounds of “humanization”, which inspires you to the next extraordinary self-contradiction:

DAVID: Long ago I agreed God has emotions, in His own way similar to ours.

dhw: And thought patterns too. Thank you for confirming that this is your belief. So please stop complaining that my logical theories are wrong because they contain thought patterns and emotions similar to ours.

DAVID: My complaint is your humanized God thinks and acts like a human, not in any way God-like.

Quite apart from the fact that you yourself once talked of “failed experiments”, and you yourself are certain that he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations (these are the three “human” features of my alternative theories), your complaint is that although you agree your God has thought patterns and emotions like ours, he cannot possibly have acted in a manner which is based on thought patterns and emotions like ours!

DAVID: God did not kill them off. Bad luck did, per Raup.

dhw: If your all-knowing God deliberately designed them with limited adaptability, then he obviously knew his design would result in their non-survival! That's why you wrote that he is responsible for the mess. And it was their bad luck that your God deliberately designed them so that they would go extinct.

DAVID: No answer needed, I told you my view, God limited adaptability as God was speciating as necessary.

He deliberately designed 99 out of 100 in such a way that they would not survive when conditions changed (that’s how he “killed them off”), and when chance changed the conditions again, he designed 99 more species out of 100, ensuring that they too would not survive. Now please tell us what the 99 were “necessary” for. As for “bad luck”, it was the bad luck of the 99 that your God created them in order to kill them off. As for God’s dependence on luck, random conditions dictated what species he could design, and which one of the 100 would survive to enable him to pursue his only goal. And so you have to change your story when it comes to the Cambrian, when all of a sudden he does control conditions, and starts all over again by designing our ancestors from scratch – thereby rendering 100 out of 100 previous species unnecessary.

dhw: You then switch to your usual escape route of what Adler has to say on the subject, although in fact he has nothing to say on the subject.

DAVID: Adler's view is my view. God evolved humans as an endpoint to evolution.

And therefore God designed 99 species out 100 which had no connection with humans or our food? If Adler did not say so, then there is no point in mentioning Adler.

DAVID: The fact that God didn't control every tiny or large element of the environment but was able to produce miraculous humans shows His innate powers.

dhw: Nobody would deny that if your God exists, he has innate powers, which are evident from the existence of all life. This has absolutely nothing to do with your illogical theories about your God’s one and only purpose and the inefficient, cumbersome, messy image of him that you present.

DAVID: An all-powerful God produced us using that cumbersome system.

So now it has become a fact that your all-powerful God is an inefficient, cumbersome, messy designer. If he exists, I hope he has a sense of humour.