Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 30, 2023, 17:23 (327 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I agreed about 1) long ago.

dhw: But you still pooh-pooh the idea that a being who enjoys and is interested in doing something might actually be motivated by his enjoyment and interest in doing it.

You always equate God's motivations exactly as ours, when they must be considered allegorically. The pooh-pooh is for your humanizing of God.

DAVID: I answered 3): " Experimenting is a blind process amazingly just like your favorite Darwin's chance process.”

dhw: If your God deliberately designed different life forms, or if he deliberately gave them the means to design their own forms because his motive was to enjoy creating things, or to enjoy watching things use the talents he had given them, the process is neither blind nor left to chance. He gets what he wants – the vast and ever changing variety of life’s history. As opposed to your version of 2) - the totally incomprehensible theory that your all-powerful God only wanted us plus food, and therefore knowingly designed and then had to cull 99.9 out of 100 life forms that had no connection with his one and only goal.

DAVID: (2) is your constantly stated objection to my theory, which I have fully refuted in the past. Assuming God exists, He evolved us. When I state humans were His goal is when you distort evolution's culling process by complaining about it.

Once again you describe a God in partial control of progress.

dhw: You have never ever refuted it. There is no dispute or complaint over our shared belief that we evolved and that 99.9% of organisms have disappeared. But when I challenge the absurd illogicality of an all-powerful God deliberately doing something that has no connection with what he wants to do, your “refutation” is always that you can’t know your God’s reasons for sticking to the theoretical purpose and method you have imposed on him. i.e. it makes no sense to you.

All of evolution is designed by God to create a huge population of humans controlling all of Earth and its resources. Where did the bush of life come from? Nothing is unintended. All purposely exists. Your problem is you are blind to the teleology of evolutionary processes.

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

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

DAVID: Illogical only to you. Adler assumes humans were God's goal.

dhw: But apparently he does not assume that your God deliberately and incomprehensibly designed and then had to cull 99.9 out of 100 species which had no connection with us or our food.

See above. God's purposefullness is obvious.

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Foolish point. All forms require an active biochemistry which first evolves so forms can evolve.

dhw: But by “evolve” you always mean that God designs it. And the only “forms” he wants to design are us plus our food, so he designs lots and lots of pre-Cambrian forms before designing us “de novo”, but even then he goes on designing lots and lots of forms that have no connection with us plus food, and you don’t know why. Round we go in the same circles because although your theories make no sense to you, you start with what you wish to believe (I am quoting you), and the messy, cumbersome, inefficient rest follows.

My view of God is that He designed evolution to produce us for His own unknown reasons. Yes, I consider evolution a cumbersome way to do it, but Dayenu, I am happy to exist. I won't change that viewpoint. It all makes sense if a person sees proof of God beyond a reasonable doubt. You want God revealed on a silver platter. It doesn't work that way.