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

by dhw, Wednesday, May 17, 2023, 13:26 (554 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Still stuck in your biases. God achieved brilliant designs using a cumbersome method He developed. BUT the cumbersome interpretation is my human interpretation.

dhw: Why “developed”? If he was your all-powerful and all-knowing first cause, he must have designed it. (“Developed” sounds a bit like learning as he goes along, which would be anathema to you.) I agree with you completely that if he exists, he achieved brilliant designs, and it is only your human interpretation that renders them cumbersome, messy and inefficient! That is what I’m objecting to!

DAVID: Developed equals created in my mind. Evolution is not simple creation. And the final appearance of humans with huge brains is a total surprise if following Darwin guidlines.

So your God deliberately created a method you call messy, cumbersome and inefficient, which can only mean you regard him as a messy, cumbersome and inefficient creator. The rest of your answer is off subject, but in any case, who is “totally surprised” by what? Yes, we are special, but don’t you think the appearance of elephants, eagles, whales and the duckbilled platypus are surprising when you consider that life began with single cells?

DAVID: Once again we are exposed to a directionless God of your imagination.

dhw: I have just listed his basic directions.

DAVID: How is there direction if He relies on experimentation which can cause direction change?

dhw: If his purpose was to produce a being like himself (plus food), experimentation was directed towards producing a being like himself (plus food). No change of direction.

DAVID: Experimenting implies searching for a solution. Where is the direction an all-knowing God would have?

The whole point is that God is not necessarily all-knowing! That would explain why he has to experiment in order to follow the direction laid down by his purpose! (Incidentally, the "all-knowing" theory is a massive headache for religion, raising the whole subject of predestination versus free will.)

DAVID: Coming up with new ideas means direction change.

dhw: If his purpose was to find out the potential of his invention (life) by experimenting with it, there is no change of direction if he experiments to find out the potential of his invention.

DAVID: Where is the direction of purpose in your scenario of a wimpy God?

The purpose is to find out the potential of his invention. You have strange criteria for your subjective judgements. Trying out new things is called “wimpy”, while messy, cumbersome, inefficient design is called “brilliant”.

DAVID: And allowing autonomous events in creation can easily mean direction change. 'Directionless' fits.

dhw: If his purpose was to find out what his invention was capable of producing by itself, there is no change of direction if he found out what his invention was capable of producing by itself. (Always remembering that he could dabble if he wanted to.)

DAVID: So the individual organisms invent and if God doesn't like it, He dabbles them away?? Directionless activity!!!

The direction is provided by his enjoyment and interest in an ongoing history which he has set in motion with his wonderful invention. Your own theory has him starting out with a purpose, deliberately designing 100 individual organisms of which 99 are irrelevant to his direction (= directionless), and so he either dabbles them away or, even more directionless, lets chance destroy them for him (he doesn’t control the conditions which determine whether an organism lives or dies).

DAVID: God's evolution happened. You can't just dismiss it.

If God exists, of course his evolution happened. That doesn’t mean it happened for the purpose or by the messy, cumbersome and inefficient method which you have invented!

DAVID: Your lack of understanding is amazing: anything God does is OK with me.

dhw: But you don’t know what God does! You imagine that he uses an inefficient method to achieve the goal you imagine he has! If I say God experiments, will you accept my theory because anything God does is OK with me? Your statement actually means that only your theory about what God does is OK with you.

DAVID: What did you expect? My belief in God is very firm.

We are not arguing about your belief in God, but about your totally illogical theory about your God’s purpose and method.

dhw: […] Your belief that a God is “weak” if he does precisely what he wants to do (= my theories) sits uneasily with your theory that a messy, cumbersome, inefficient method denotes all-powerful, all-knowing brilliance.

DAVID: Again a distortion of my belief: God, a brilliant designer (you agree) chose to evolve humans by evolving them over a long period of time. There is much evidence God can directly create (the Cambrian), but His final chosen method remained drawn out over 3.8 billion years.

My agreement that God, if he exists, is a brilliant designer is a rejection of your theory, which turns him into a messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer! The fact that you believe he can directly create what he wants to create, but instead chose to create 99 out of 100 life forms that were NOT what he wanted to create, is what makes you criticize him for being messy, cumbersome and inefficient. And you call that brilliant. What have I distorted?