Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, December 31, 2023, 16:51 (118 days ago) @ dhw

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.

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

dhw: You have stated categorically that you are certain your God enjoys creating and is interested in his creations. That provides a motive for all his actions. The words “enjoy” and “interest” are not allegories.

I said treat the meanings of the words allegorically. A standard teaching in theology by many authors.

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. […]

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

dhw: Your all-powerful God would do what he wanted to do, and if he wanted to give freedom to his creations, he would do so. Your own examples of this are bacteria and viruses, which are free to kill us if they want to, and human free will.

I was referring to evolutionary progress to a purposeful goal, not pursued by your humanized God.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Your problem is that you are blind to the fact that 99.9% of the vast bush of past life had no connection with what you claim was our God’s one and only purpose from the beginning, as repeated here, and so you make him into a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer. As this is what you wish him to be (your self-confessed starting point for your concept of God), you absolutely refuse to consider the possibility that he might have created precisely what he wanted to create because he did NOT start out with us plus food as his one and only purpose.

What God achieved with the remaining 0.1% is what I described above. You distort evolution backwards from the result.

DAVID: My view of God is that He designed evolution to produce us for His own unknown reasons.

dhw: Your usual response: you can’t think of a single reason why your God should use such an illogical method to achieve the purpose you impose on him, but still you stick to it.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Your usual silly dodge away from your illogical theories of evolution to your enjoyment of your life, and to proving the existence of your God. I am also happy to exist, and all my alternative theories allow for the existence of your God.

None of your humanizing theories remotely resemble My God.