Big brain evolution: our mutation rate is slowing (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, January 26, 2019, 13:34 (1907 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I fully accept God's choice of method without question.

dhw: Choice of method to do what? You yourself cannot understand why, if your God has full control and his sole purpose was to produce H. sapiens, his method of fulfilling his purpose was to spend 3.5+ billion years specially designing millions of other life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders simply so that the organisms could eat one another until 3.5+ billion years had passed. That is what is illogical, and it is this illogical hypothesis that you “fully accept”. All our hypotheses are patterns of human thought, and yours is based on the premise that because humans are so clever, your God couldn’t possibly have wanted to do anything else besides creating us. If that isn’t a human pattern of thought, I don’t know what is. (See below for the bold.)

DAVID: You still want to pursue 'illogical' God thoughts and procedures. You accept that God could have produced us in six days and rested on the seventh.

What? Why on earth are you bringing Genesis into it? And how can I possibly accept it when I don’t even accept that there is a God in the first place (50/50 for me). And yet again, I am not pursuing “illogical God thoughts and procedures”. I am pursuing the illogicality of your interpretation of his thoughts and procedures.

DAVID: So why did He evolve us?

Why did he evolve us is the question you keep asking me, but when I answer it, you complain that I am endowing him with human thoughts. When I ask you the same question, I’m told it was so that we would think about him, have a relationship with him, and admire his works. But these apparently are not human thoughts.

DAVID: I accept history that we evolved and since I accept God as existing, I accept He did it His way. You, without accepting God, have concluded God made an illogical judgment.

Yet again, no, no, no. I have concluded that your interpretation of God’s way is illogical, and so have you but you try to gloss it over by misrepresenting the argument, as now bolded above. So please don’t tell me that I am questioning your God’s logic.

DAVID: Your problem not mine. Of course both of us as limited humans used human reasoning. At least mine is not embellished.

As regards “embellishment”, this exchange under “Emergence” sums it up.

DAVID: I have agreed that God watches with interest as He evolves everyone, but with involved interest as a creator, not a spectator.

dhw: If God exists, then of course he is the creator, but what makes you think a creator cannot also be a spectator watching the spectacle he creates?

DAVID: Of course He is a spectator to His creation, but there is no evidence He desired a spectacle for His 'enjoyment', one of your favorite humanizing suppositions about God. I'm simply in interpreting what history shows us.

Of course there’s no evidence of what he desires (assuming he even exists). Where is your evidence for the illogical hypotheses bolded above? You harp on about purpose, and you agree that he watches the spectacle with interest. Then let’s drop the word “enjoyment”. Now please tell me why you think he finds it interesting.