Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, December 29, 2023, 11:15 (120 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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: Never ignored. Your bumbling God does not know His goals if any. Experimenting is a blind process amazingly just like your favorite Darwin's chance process. We see a fixed evolutionary process in two opposite ways. Your God drifts along, while my purposeful God knows exactly what to do and does it.

All of these theories allow for the existence of your purposeful God, but you have ignored 1) and 3). Experimenting is not a blind process, since even in 2) I have allowed for the fixed goal of creating the right formula for a being with some of his own attributes. I had already rejected Darwin’s chance process 16 years ago when I opened this website. Your purposeful, messy and inefficient designer God apparently knows that he must design 99.9 out of 100 species that have no connection with the one and only purpose you allow him. In 3) my God has a different purpose from yours (see 1), knows exactly what to do in order to achieve his purpose, and does it directly. Stop dodging!

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.

dhw: 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: Adler accepts and uses Darwin's chance evolution theory exactly.

So there is no point in your even mentioning him as you struggle to defend your illogical theories of evolution. […]

DAVID: My view of God is my view.

No one will disagree with that! And as you so honestly informed us three weeks ago: “I first choose a form of God I wish to believe in. The rest follows.” Your mind is closed, even when your theories make no sense to you.

dhw: Your insistence that he directly designed our ancestors during the Cambrian simply tells us that every pre-Cambrian species was irrelevant to his purpose.

DAVID: That pre-Cambrian forms developed necessary biochemistry for the Cambrian is totally ignored as usual.

It has been dealt with repeatedly. All life depends on necessary biochemistry. We are trying to account for all the different FORMS of life. According to you, your God designed 99.9 out of 100 FORMS of life (species) that had no connection with us plus our food (his one and only purpose), and actually designed OUR life form “de novo”, without any predecessors, thereby rendering all preceding FORMS of life irrelevant to the purpose you impose on him.