Humans, Dogs and oxytocin (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, September 24, 2015, 17:27 (3135 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: ...you keep trying to get me to tell you how He did it. I simply believe God guided evolution, without worrying about details. As an agnostic you sure worry a lot about God's machinations.-dhw: I am trying to test the hypotheses of a dear friend (the bulldog is now replaced by the sweet-talking diplomat), and need your advice on how to cope with his dismissal of my inquiries as details not worth worrying about. So after presenting your convincing arguments, how WOULD you respond to an atheist who said: “I simply believe chance guided evolution, without worrying about details”?
-DAVID: With my point of view I accept his statement of his beliefs. I would tell him he can't prove it, and I view the odds against his proposal are enormous. But then neither can I prove my design conclusion, although I listed many factors in my two books, as to why I think design is proven to me beyond reasonable doubt.-Thank you for your very helpful answer. May I follow your example? You can't prove your belief that God guided evolution through divine preprogramming or divine dabbling or some other unknown form of guidance, and I view as enormous the odds against your proposal that God preprogrammed the weaverbird's nest from the beginning, or subsequently “dabbled”, as part of his plan to produce humans. But then neither can I prove my autonomous inventive intelligence hypothesis (not a conclusion, but a possibly theistic explanation of evolutionary innovation). And so if I cease to worry about details such as divine preprogramming and dabbling and anthropocentrism, will you cease to worry about details such as bacterial intelligence?