God and evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, April 07, 2017, 01:46 (2570 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Final decisions do not lead to fluidity. Two of your thoughts are not fluid at all: 1) humans were your God’s only purpose, and 2) your God designed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder, all of which were related to that purpose. Your fluidity comes into play when you try to find an explanation for the dichotomy and can’t.

DAVID: Again, no dichotomy. Main point, God's goal is to create humans.

dhw: No fluidity here.

Of course. Humans are a goal. Life styles and natural wonders supply energy so evolution can reach the goal of humans. No dichotomy except in your way of looking at things.

DAVID: Time to do it is a human concept, not God's. He is timeless. Limitations or not are human thinking, not God's. Is He limited, probably not, but it remains a possibility. Is He all-powerful. More probable. Can I be absolutely positive about either thought? No.

dhw: We cannot know your God’s mind, so how with your human thinking can you be absolutely positive that God’s sole purpose was to create humans and he designed everything to relate to that purpose?

I am certainly allowed to reach that conclusion.

DAVID: As for experimentation, all of the intricate examples of complexity in the genome and biologic functions reprised yesterday deny that possibility. They all strongly suggest immediate saltation of immediately active processes, nothing stepwise as would be the case with experimentation.

dhw: You seem to have missed the point of my “experimentation” hypothesis, which is the only explanation I can find to remove the dichotomy between your two basic precepts. Nothing to do with the complexity of the genome! Your God starts out wanting to produce beings like himself. He does not have a blueprint. He designs all kinds of beings, but they are not close enough to the image of himself, and so he continues to experiment.

Neat just-so story. God designed a complex evolving universe which allows life, based on quantum mechanics. If He can do that He knew in advance how to make humans.

dhw: You have rejected it because “any power that can produce a fine-tuned universe can then see to the creation of humans without difficulty.”

Exactly.

dhw: This leaves you with no explanation for the dichotomy except your dogmatic insistence that God did it your way and you don’t know why.

I don't see a dichotomy. It all fits together.

DAVID: ….But currently it depends on what 'clear' means. My interpretation of the word is not yours. I see nothing that is 'clearly' correct. Possible explanations, yes, clear, no.

dhw: However, I would suggest to you that any explanation we can understand has a better chance of being correct than no explanation at all, which is the situation you are faced with when the combination of your two hypotheses does not make sense even to you.

It does make sense to me. Humans are the goal and balance of nature supplies the energy to take the time to do it.

xxxx

dhw: By “very close together”, I thought you meant he [Tony] shared your ideas on God’s purposes, methods and nature – i.e. the subject under discussion.

DAVID: I respect Tony's beliefs, but cannot accept most of his theology for me. We share a belief in a powerful God and His abilities to create life through evolution.

dhw: Tony doesn’t even believe in evolution.

My interpretation of Tony is that God arranged for all species appearing over time. Perhaps tony will clarify.