Unanswered questions (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, June 29, 2019, 22:45 (1756 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: ID folks agree with me but don't name their required designer as God.

dhw: And they don’t claim that your God designed every single life form extant and extinct for the sole purpose of getting them to eat or not eat one another until he specially designed the only thing he wanted to design, which was us. The only support you have is for the existence of a designer.

DAVID: True, but that is because they are not discussing evolution at our level of inquiry.

dhw: So please don’t tell us that ID folks agree with you. But do please tell us if any scientists, philosophers or theologians support the above theory.

But of curse they agree with me, because I have accepted their point that God designed all of evolution. They just don't use the word God, but it is always implied.

DAVID: I accept that God ran evolution and designed all stages. He had to do it 'this way' because that is what history tells us.

Why have you ignored the following exchange?
dhw: The history of evolution shows a succession of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders. It does not show that your God designed every single one of them, and it does not show that your God’s purpose was that they should eat or not one another until he specially designed H. sapiens, which was his one and only purpose.

DAVID: You are right. There is no proof that God did anything. There is a concept called 'faith'.

dhw: End of discussion. You have faith that your illogical interpretation of your God’s mind is correct. So you needn’t claim that history supports you, or that Adler and ID folk support you. They don't. And I eagerly wait to hear if anybody supports you!

Why can't you allow me to integrate the reasonable principals of experts (ID and Adler)to reach a conclusion that God exists and that the specialness of humans proves the point that God exists?

dhw: Why is it right to say that your very purposeful God’s purpose was to create humans, but it is wrong to ask what was his purpose in creating humans, not to mention whales, monarch butterflies and weaverbirds’ nests? What is the point of insisting on “purposefulness” if you refuse to debate what the purposes might be?

DAVID: You are asking me to repeat previous discussions. Econiches for food on the way to humans. Why can't you accept that God chose to evolve humans starting with bacteria? Questioning God's motives at a human level of thought solves nothing.

dhw: Why can’t you accept that if God exists, he chose to evolve (though this does not mean specially design) ALL forms of life etc., and even you have “no idea” why he would do so if his only purpose was us? That is your faith.

You have constantly totally misused my statement about: 'no idea' . What I don't know is why He chose to evolve rather than direct creation. We've had that discussion and perhaps He has limits or that He chose to evolve everything. Either/or.

Re econiches:

DAVID: (Under “balance of nature”) Econiches provide food for all living animals, as long as they maintain their precise balance with a proper apex predator. Introducing domestic cats was a disaster and humans have learned this only in retrospect. Econiches fill the bush of life for a necessary reason.

dhw: Econiches are balanced until they become unbalanced, and then you have a new econiche. Nothing whatsoever to do with the theory that organisms eat or do not eat one another until your God can specially design the only thing he wants to design (us).

You are quite correct! Econiches are so necessary they have the ability to re-adapt!

DAVID: He designed humans from precursor primates. He got to that stage from previous stages of evolution.

dhw: Since we both believe in common descent, we can agree that previous stages of evolution led to primates, and primates led to humans. That still doesn’t explain why a fully-in-control God “had to” specially design whale flippers, cuttlefish camouflage, monarch migration, weaverbirds’ nests, salmon migratory reproduction, and slug/algae/bacteria triple symbiosis etc. in order to specially design us.

Because I view Him as in charge of conducting and designing all of evolution. It is God who speciates, my solution to understanding that problem. Speciation requires design!