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

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 17, 2023, 18:21 (345 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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.

Why repeat thoughts I fully reject. A cumbersome method invented by a creator cannot imply a defective creator!! You don't know His reasons for His method of choice!

dhw: 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.)

I won't enter a debate on that point. All knowing about what has many avenues.

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?

dhw: 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”.

The bold means your God is clueless about what He is doing.

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!!!

dhw: 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).

A distortion of what evolution accomplishes. You have just presented a God who has no idea as to what is the outcome.

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.

dhw: 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?

From above: "Why repeat thoughts I fully reject. A cumbersome method invented by a creator cannot imply a defective creator!! You don't know His reasons for His method of choice!"