Return to David's theory of evolution, purpose & theodicy (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 03, 2024, 10:08 (26 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

dhw: The precise figures don’t matter anyway. The point is that according to you, your God designed and then killed off the vast majority of species as they had no connection with his purpose. You don’t know why, so you say his method was messy, cumbersome and inefficient, but you refuse to consider any alternatives.

This is the theory you continually try to avoid discussing, because you know it makes no sense.

DAVID: Your constant distortion of evolutionary statistics has gotten us nowhere. I don't agree with your interpretations. It is simple. Evolution occurred and produced an entirely unexpected result IF evolution was a natural process, WE are an amazingly weird result. Adler's viewpoint. You won't try to accept that, because you can't. God appears.

And so once again you completely dodge the issue. All life and all the natural wonders you have listed are “amazingly weird results”. And you and your fellow ID-ers point to the complexities and quite rationally deduce that they are too complex (weird if you like) to be the product of chance. They and Adler therefore deduce that there is a designer, and we call him God. I accept the logic. None of that explains why, if your God’s only purpose was us and our food, he specially, individually designed and then culled a vast number (maybe 99.9%) of species that had no connection with his purpose. That is why you call him a messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer, and that is the theory at issue, which you constantly leave out of your responses

DAVID: I had no idea how to think about God until I read both Adler and Anderson. A neutral start with conclusions from there. Do you ever conclude anything?

dhw: I get it. You were neutral until you read two books, and from then on you formed the image of the God you wished to believe in, and all your conclusions since then have been based on what they taught you to wish for. And your wishes denote neutrality. You have a marvellous gift for reversing the meaning of words.

DAVID: Your marvelous misinterpretation!!! Purposeful? I started with no beliefs, neutral, NOW not neutral. What is reversed is you.

And you have told us openly and honestly: ““I first choose a form of God I wish to believe in. The rest follows.” And “A neutral theology is what I try to follow based on my concept of God's personality.” Both in the present tense. Once upon a time you were neutral , but now you are not.

dhw: You make your God what you wish to make him.

DAVID: Of course we do.

And you call this neutrality!

Darwinism and God

dhw: The starting point of this discussion was your statement that “Two alternatives exist: God or nature”.[...] I have pointed out that millions of people, including Darwin, the Pope, the Rev. Charles Kingsley and me, believe(d) that the two are compatible. […]

DAVID: For ID and myself, only a designer fits the known factual material.

dhw: You stated that Darwinism and God are ALTERNATIVES. Millions of people accept Darwin’s theory of evolution AND the theory that God is the designer.

DAVID: Most folks don't think of the design concept, simply that God did it from faith.

Most people haven’t read Darwin’s Origin of Species, but a lot of people know the theory and a lot of people who know it believe it and also believe in a God who created the process. Therefore it is absurd to say that Darwinism and God are incompatible.

DAVID: Following worldwide science literature, I see more and more praise of an amazingly 'designed' structure with a quick scurry back to natural selection did it somehow. Passive natural selection!

dhw: We have long since agreed that natural selection doesn’t create anything but only determines which organs and organisms survive. The issue is not support for design but your ridiculous claim that the theory of evolution is incompatible with belief in a designer God. It’s not. Stop dodging.

DAVID: ID's position is Darwinism is completely wrong and only design is correct. I represent ID.

Congratulations on your appointment. (I hope they don’t all know about your own theory of God’s messy, cumbersome, inefficient design.) And I’m sorry, but there are lots of people who would vehemently disagree that Darwinism is COMPLETELY wrong. Even your fellow ID-ers remain open minded on the all-important theory of common descent:

Does intelligent design oppose common descent?
Uncommon Descent (not very appropriate here!)
https://uncommondescent.com › evolution › does-intellig...

"I first need to make clear that living things can be the product both of intelligent design and of common descent. If the designer chose to guide the process of gradual change from species to species, that would be both common descent and intelligent design. In other words, intelligent design theory does not require that common descent is false. Neither does intelligent design require that common descent is true...."

They reject random mutations, and so do I. But if "intelligence" = God, clearly it is ridiculous to say that Darwin's theory of evolution is completely incompatible with God. They are not alternatives.