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

by David Turell , Monday, May 22, 2023, 16:30 (549 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Your statement that God is not all=knowing explains the weak God you present. A God who created the universe and then started life knows what He is doing and HOW to do it at the start. I fully reject your inadequate God.

dhw: It’s not a statement as such, because it depends on the earlier "if"- but all my alternative theistic theories are indeed based on the different "ifs" which lead to the conclusion that he is not all-knowing. And I see absolutely nothing weak or wimpish or inadequate in the concept of a being who enjoys creating new and interesting things, or allows his own invention to provide new and interesting things, if that is what he wants to do. Many artists, writers, composers set out with an idea which then spawns new ideas – often unexpected. Does that mean they are weak and wimpish? What emphatically is weak and wimpish is a God who sets out with one particular purpose and invents a method which forces him to create 99 out of 100 designs that have no connection with his purpose.

I have bolded your humanizing view of God where you are comparing Him to human thinkers, as if that makes your humanized God OK, just because humans do it. God is way above us. You just dragged Him down to our level.

DAVID: My answer has always been the same: God chose to evolve humans for His own reasons. Since He chose evolution as His system of creation, He must feel it is the proper way to go. I think it is cumbersome and roundabout in my human way of analysis.

dhw: And I have asked you why you think it is messy, cumbersome and inefficient, and your answer continues to be one long dodge. I will tell you why: you think that designing 99 out of 100 species that are irrelevant to his one and only purpose is a messy, cumbersome and inefficient way of achieving his purpose. And since your always-in-control-of-evolution God does not control the environmental conditions which species must cope with if they are to survive, his range of creation is limited at every stage by the need to conform to those conditions, which may be the reason why he keeps designing species irrelevant to his purpose, although he doesn’t actually need to create them, because he is perfectly capable of directly creating the only species he wants to create (plus its food). You can find no reason why he would choose such a messy, cumbersome, inefficient method, but you refuse to consider any alternative theory. Please tell us if you have different reasons from the above.

You constantly avoid any answer to my point God can design for any type of conditions, so that does not stop Him from advancing complexity of forms. Instead, you invent the bolded criticism out of whole cloth. We are discussing the history of evolution as created by God, and you are bent out of shape over the idea that an end point of humans changes the import of that history.

DAVID: You have given us the reasons why we can call the system cumbersome. You questioned God's use of evolution years ago as inferior to direct creation.

dhw: I have given you the reasons why YOU call the system messy, cumbersome and inefficient. I have never questioned evolution, and if God exists, I have never questioned his use of evolution to achieve whatever his purpose may have been. I only question your insistence that his only purpose was us – in which case of course direct creation would have been superior to evolution! Therefore I offer you alternative explanations for his diversifying use of evolution!

And all those proposals are based on a God who is not all-knowing, unsure of His course, and highly humanized. Not a God I recognize.