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

by dhw, Sunday, May 28, 2023, 12:41 (543 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My God doesn't have to experiment, learn or discover! He is all-knowing while you prefer a God who is not all knowing and must experiment, learn or discover. A vast difference in Gods. Of course your God is very human, because He is just like us, not all-knowing.

All-knowing (omniscient) is another of those terms which are used without any thought of their implications. Let me list some of them for you. In your theory, your all-knowing (and also all-powerful) God had just one purpose: to create H. sapiens plus our food. He had no control over environmental changes, but he knew what they would be, that 99% of his designs would be irrelevant to his purpose, and eventually the Cambrian era would supply him with the extra oxygen he knew he needed, and he would then start all over again designing our ancestors de novo, plus lots more species that would have no connection with us or our food. He knew in advance that natural catastrophes, and “rogue” cells and the bacteria and viruses he designed, would cause immense suffering and death, but despite being all-powerful, he was powerless to stop them. And he gave humans free will but knew/knows in advance every decision that every human is going to take, which includes all the evil that has sprung from his deliberate creation. But let’s be fair – he also knew that the evil would be balanced by good: love, beauty, altruism etc – and he even knew every note of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, and every word of Shakespeare’s King Lear before humans arrived on the scene. (You usually like to focus only on the good side of his omniscience and omnipotence and pretend the bad side is not worth considering.) We can take the story of Adam and Eve as a symbol for all the problems you create with your theory: he created them and the serpent, knew they would eat the apple, and knew precisely what all the terrible results would be. He knew of every evil deed that would result from his deliberate creation, but he still went ahead. This is the all-knowing, messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer you believe in. So be it.

DAVID: 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!!!

dhw: 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: Your usual woolly distortion of my belief: I accept what God does without question.

Yet again: you accept without question your own THEORY of what he does and why he does it.

DAVID: I don't have to know how or why He made his choices of a creation mechanism. He chose a cumbersome system (from a human point of view) to produce a magnificent human brain, the most complex item in the universe. My God knew exactly what He was doing with His goal in plain sight for Him.

And that apparently explains why he chose to design 99 out of 100 species that had no connection with us and our brain, although he was perfectly capable of designing us and our brain directly. All my alternative theories culminate in the human brain, without being messy, cumbersome or inefficient.

dhw: 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!

DAVID: Once again, I don't need to make sense of it to satisfy your rigid requirements of proof of understanding. God is only partially comprehensible.

I don't require rigid proof. I only ask for a theory that makes sense. If you are happy to believe your theory that your God is the one I have described above (using your own descriptive terms) - a theory which makes no sense to you - then so be it. But please stop pretending that your inexplicable theory is the only possible truth.