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

by dhw, Saturday, May 27, 2023, 12:56 (544 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Stop distorting!! What I agreed to in the past is if your alternative God is accepted as highly humanized, what He does is logical. Not real support for Him.

dhw: I didn't say you supported it! And you always try to escape from the logic by exaggerating the “humanization”. Yes, all my alternatives are logical if you accept that God (if he exists) is not all-knowing, and as the debate on free will versus predestination shows, it is perfectly possible to believe in a God who does NOT know every outcome. It is also perfectly logical to believe that your God shares some of our human thought patterns and emotions, such as enjoying creating, being interested in what he creates, and enhancing the enjoyment by learning/discovering/ inventing new things. I would assume that such patterns are what is meant by his making us “in his own image”, since the latter is unlikely to refer to our physical appearance.

DAVID: The God you present is hyper humanized, which you refuse to recognize. I base it on Adler's book, 'How to Think About God'. You can believe in your God if you wish, I can't. As for trying to compare us emotionally with God, We don't know how our concept of emotions translates to God's. I'll stick (per Adler)to the allegorical issue of the differences. Specifically, we may use the same words, but they do not have teh same meaning as applied to God.

Hiding behind Adler is not an argument. You think your God enjoys creating and is interested in his creations. So do I. You and I speak (almost) the same language, and what you and I mean by these words is what we think applies also to God – otherwise there is no point in our using such terms. You also agree that he and we probably have thought patterns and emotions in common. But you don’t think he would enjoy experimenting, learning, discovering etc., so you call it “hyper”. You presumably think he would enjoy creating 99 species out of 100 that have nothing to do with his one and only purpose. And you call that “messy”, “cumbersome” and “inefficient”. My alternatives have him doing precisely what he wants to do. Sounds a darn sight more godlike to me.

DAVID: An amazing difference in interpretation. I see God using a cumbersome system of creation of His own choice, with the magnificent result of our brain, the most complex item in the universe!!!

As he is first cause (if he exists), the method is his own invention. All our theories culminate in the human brain, but none of mine force him to invent a messy, cumbersome, inefficient method resulting in a theory which you yourself find incomprehensible.

DAVID: Anyone who know Raup's work would understand.

dhw: Then please enlighten me. If your God is the first cause, why would he have designed a system that forced him to create 99 out of 100 species that were irrelevant to his purpose, although according to you he was perfectly capable of direct creation? Your answer is usually that I should ask God, because you can’t make any sense out of your theory either, but maybe Raup has told you.

DAVID: Your response is non-sensical. I accept what God chooses to do without questioning it as you do. You want God perfectly explained, but God doesn't explain, He just does.

But you don’t know what God chooses to do! It is your incomprehensible theory that your God chose the above method to fulfil what you regard as his one and only purpose. You are accepting YOUR THEORY concerning what God chose to do, and YOU can’t make any sense of it. So maybe you theory is wrong!