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

by dhw, Saturday, May 13, 2023, 07:25 (341 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 1)I know you’re happy with your conclusions. I know you insist that your God’s one and only purpose was to produce us and our food. I know Adler uses us as evidence that God exists, and if God does exist, then of course he chose evolution. 2) I also know that you can’t understand why your God chose to design 99 out of 100 species that were irrelevant to the purpose you impose on him, and that you consider him to be a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer. And I know that you believe that his messy, cumbersome, inefficient design means that he is a brilliant designer.

For some reason, you have ignored everything I’ve listed under 2).

DAVID: I've not ignored your distortions in 2). God has not told me why He chose to evolve us in a cumbersome way over lots of time. God is a brilliant designer. He made life!!! There is a huge difference between a cumbersome method and a cumbersome designer God is a brilliant designer who chose to use a cumbersome method of creation. Surely you can see the difference in interpretation.

If your God is the all-powerful, all-knowing first cause, he DESIGNED the method. If a designer designs and uses a messy, cumbersome and inefficient method, I suspect most people who speak English would agree that he must be a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer. Why do you refuse to consider the possibility that he may have used a method that neatly, elegantly and efficiently enabled him to fulfil whatever his purpose might have been? I have offered you three such proposals, fitting possible methods to possible purposes.

dhw: Conversely, the three alternative theories I offer all make perfect sense, but you reject them on the grounds that they entail human thought patterns and emotions, although you agree that your God may well have human thought patterns and emotions.

DAVID: I'll grant you our emotions may reflect God's in some allegorical way. Your statement is consistent with your view, God logically did it wrong. Your logic is better than God's, really???

dhw: No, it’s YOU who say he did it wrong – unless you believe that a messy, cumbersome, inefficient method is “right”! In my alternatives, he does everything right – he either wants to create a species able to think as he does (plus its food), and successfully experiments with different life forms and ecosystems before finding the best formula, or he experiments to explore all the possibilities of different life forms, learning and getting new ideas as he goes along, or he sets up a free-for-all to see what his invention can produce. In all three, he conforms to your own belief that he enjoys creating and is interested in what he creates. In none of them does he do anything wrong, messy, cumbersome or inefficient.

DAVID: Back we go to dhw's confused God who has no idea what He is doing without experimenting, testing, or letting living creations self-invent without His guidance and so surprise God with their inventiveness which produces whatever they feel like, no purpose or direction necessary. What a total disaster of a God in dhw's fertile but weak imagination. Like no God ever described.

Why do you think experimentation, testing or deliberately inventing autonomous beings means confusion or purposelessness? All of my theistic alternatives lead to the history of life as we know it. Why does that make them into a total disaster? And why do you think your messy, clumsy, inefficient version is a superior way of creating this history than mine, which at each step produces what your God wants to produce?