Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 02, 2024, 10:48 (324 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: Your usual silly word games, on a par with all-powerful means with limited powers. When you wrote that you were certain your God enjoyed creating and was interested in his creations, what did YOU mean by those words if you didn’t mean that creating gave him pleasure and he wanted to pay attention to what he had created? Please answer. (NB: an allegory is a symbol that stands for some kind of truth or moral. The words enjoy and interest don't symbolize anything!)

DAVID: I am only following theologians' rules for describing God.

Once more: When you wrote that you were certain your God enjoyed creating and was interested in his creations, what did YOU mean by those words?[/i]

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.

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

dhw: The first of my alternative theories has him experimenting in order to find the right formula for a being in his own image. The other two alternatives have him 1) purposefully “progressing” through new ideas and discoveries, and 2) endowing his invention with the means of “progressing”. […]

DAVID: God does not discover.

How the heck do you know?

DAVID: He creates what He expects to create.

If he exists, and if he wanted to create the vast variety of past and present life forms we know of, then he would have expected his work to produce the vast variety of life forms we know of. This may have been done deliberately, through ongoing experimentation, or by giving cells the autonomy to produce their own variety. Why would he deliberately produce 99.9 out of 100 species that had no purpose whatsoever (if his one and only purpose was to produce us and our food)? Your usual answer is that you haven’t a clue, but God must have his reasons for his messy inefficiency.

DAVID: The 99.9% led to the exiting life which we control now.
And earlier: :
DAVID: “ALL OF EVOLUTION is designed to create (a huge population of ) humans"

No they didn’t, and no it wasn’t. How many more times? Only the 0.1% led to current life forms.

DAVID: Another distortion. 0.1% is a remaining group after the culling process of evolution. We are in charge; it is all for us to use.

No distortion. If your God controlled evolution, he designed and then culled 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with the purpose you impose on him. We and our food are the product of the remaining 0.1%. This is not changed by the fact that we are in charge and use our fellow creatures for food.

DAVID: There is no evidence cell committees can do more than tiny adaptations.

There is no evidence that some unknown, eternal, sourceless mind preprogrammed or dabbled every species, innovation, lifestyle, strategy, natural wonder in the whole of life’s history. That is why we can only theorise.

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: My God is a fabulous purposeful designer using a messy system of creation with absolute goals in sight at all times. Very unlike your humanized experimenter.

More of your silly language games: your all-powerful God has limited powers; your God is all good, provided you ignore the bad; your theory of evolution makes perfect sense to you, although only your God can understand it; and now your designer is fabulous and purposeful though his method of designing is messy, cumbersome and inefficient. And what are all these plural absolute goals? You only allow him one (us and our food). And when you say he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, you don’t mean he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, and so his enjoyment and interest cannot possibly provide a motive for his creating things that will interest him.

Language should be a means of communication, not obfuscation.