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

by dhw, Sunday, May 14, 2023, 12:11 (340 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 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.

dhw: 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.

I would have presumed from your non-reply to this point that you have now accepted your own theory that your God is a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer, and yet you repeat your praise of his brilliant inefficiency in Part Two of “More Miscellany”.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: You keep reverting to your humanized God who has no basic direction in what He is doing.

You continue to ignore the fact that my alternatives are no more “humanized” than yours, you accept that he probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours, and all three of my theories present a God with a “basic direction” which explains the history of life’s vast variety, as we know it: 1) He experiments in order to create a being with thought patterns and emotions like his own (plus food); 2) he experiments in order to explore all the possibilities of his invention (life), learning, coming up with and enjoying new ideas as he goes along; 3) he gives his invention free rein (autonomy) in order to enjoy all the wonders it creates, although he can intervene if he feels like it. You may disapprove of such basic directions – although you are certain that your God enjoys creating and is interested in his creations – but please stop pretending that these basic directions are not basic directions.

dhw: […] 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?

DAVID: Your God experiments, allows free-for-alls, and that is supposed to end up with sapiens? He did it by fumbling His way there? We are here purposefully by my real God.

In none of my versions is he “fumbling”. I would not object to the term, however, if you applied it to the messy, clumsy, inefficient method you have invented for him, which is to deliberately design 99 out of 100 species that are irrelevant to his purpose – a method which makes no sense to you as apparently it only makes sense to God.