Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, December 28, 2023, 09:30 (329 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The problem is you do not recognize how humanized your God is.

dhw: My different theories entail different human patterns of thought. One of them coincides completely with your certainty that your God enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, which provides a perfectly acceptable motive for creating. You can hardly complain about that. Another is I have him experimenting and/or getting new ideas as he goes along, which I would not regard as any more human than having him achieving his one and only purpose by messily, clumsily and inefficiently designing and culling 99.9 out of 100 species that have no connection with his purpose. Why do you think a 99.9 per cent failure rate is more godlike than a successful exploration of potentials?

DAVID: Your experimenting God has the same 99.9% failure rate from the same evolution process! An omnipotent God does not need to experiment or change His mind.

More and more dodging. 1) Your complaint was about humanization, but you agree that your God enjoys creating and is interested in his creations. That is a possible motive. Ignored. 2) If God’s purpose was to create us plus food, you have him deliberately creating 99.9 out of 100 species that have no connection with his purpose. Daft. I have him experimenting in order to get the right formula. His designs all worked, so I wouldn’t call them failures, but you are right, he is not all-knowing and all-powerful. In my view, that is nothing like as daft as deliberately doing the wrong thing. Ignored. 3) Experimenting or creating a free-for-all in order to enjoy generating new ideas and making interesting new discoveries explains the whole history of evolution, and is neither messy nor cumbersome nor inefficient. And it has been completely successful. Ignored.

DAVID: All a fully humanized personality you would invent as a God. Philosophers of religion would reject Him, as in 'How to think about God', Adler's book.

How can an immaterial, eternal creator of a universe and of life be “fully humanized”? You make a mockery of language. No philosopher of religion KNOWS how to think about God, and I wish you would stop hiding behind Adler, who according to you does not even deal with your totally illogical theory of evolution other than to use human uniqueness as proof of God’s existence (not proof of your theory).

DAVID: My inability to know God's reasons for evolving us does not negate my conclusions that humans were His goal.

Your inability refers to your not being able to find a single reason to justify your illogical theory that an all-knowing, all-powerful God would deliberately design 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with his purpose.

DAVID: Your analysis from a Godless point of view totally distorts your conclusion.

dhw: It is not godless, and there is no conclusion. All my alternatives allow for God, but they do not turn him into the messy blunderer described by your combined theories.

DAVID: God is not a blunderer. He used a messy evolutionary system to successfully produce us.

I agree that God would not be a blunderer, and that is why I question a theory that makes him into a “messy”, “cumbersome” and “inefficient” designer.

DAVID: In the past developing humans only used what was easiest to obtain. Now with our current abilities we use everything on Earth, as God planned.

dhw: Off you go, careering away from the subject, which is not human progress and abilities but the sheer illogicality of a God who messily and inefficiently designs and then has to cull 99.9 out of 100 species that have no connection with his purpose.

DAVID: Your usual complaint that God should not have evolved us. But He didn't use direct creation, did He, reserving that for the Cambrian?

I have never said he should not have evolved us. I regard evolution as a fact. Your insistence that he directly designed our ancestors during the Cambrian simply tells us that every pre-Cambrian species was irrelevant to his purpose.

The rest of your post is repetition.