David's theory of evolution Part Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, March 06, 2020, 16:07 (1510 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The purposes you assume God might have given thought to are all human guesses. God is not a human person.

Yes, you and I are human, and we each try to explain our “guesses”. Nobody in his right mind would guess that God is a human person. But it is perfectly reasonable to conjecture, as you do, that God “very well could think like us”, and “probably has thought patterns and emotions” similar to ours, and so it is not unreasonable to “guess” at purposes and methods based on such patterns and emotions – especially if, as you acknowledge, they logically fit in with the history of life as we know it.

DAVID: As for God's thought patterns, I have said He uses logic as we do and probably has emotions like ours. Why continuously distort that in discussing my approach. It is dishonest.

dhw: How can it be distorted? Once more: If he probably has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours, you have no reason to dismiss an interpretation of evolution based on the possibility that he has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours! What is the "dishonest" distortion?

DAVID: Because all our guesses about His thoughts/reasons/ purposes are guesses. Attempt to present them but make sure they are described as guesses.

Of course they're all guesses/theories/proposals. I have never presented any of my alternatives as facts (how can alternatives be presented as facts anyway?), whereas you frequently attempt to phrase your own guesses as if they represented some objective truth. Please produce any “dishonest distortion” that you have found in any of my alternatives.

dhw: You sneered at my explanation of the process by which suckerfish may have evolved their stickability. So please explain how you think your God did it.

DAVID: I don't have to explain God. He designs the sticker. Your explanation about suckerfish explained nothing. They either could stick or could not. Moving fish in water at various speeds will suddenly stick to nothing. Fish are slick skinned.

dhw: You asked me questions about how it happened, so I asked you the same questions, which I expanded to innovation and “spreading” in general. If you don’t “have to explain” how God did it, then why should I have to explain how the suckerfish and every other species did it? This is not how discussion works!

DAVID: Neither of us can explain how the fish did it by themselves. We have both established that point from the above discussion. You have no helpful agency, which is obviously required. I have God.

If you can’t explain how your God did it, why must I explain how the fish did it? I can't help wondering why your "agent" God should have specially designed the suckerfish plus the millions of other natural wonders throughout the last 3.8 billion years, when his sole purpose was to design H. sapiens. But you have no idea either. My proposed "helpful agency" is the intelligence of cells/cell communities, which may have been the invention of your God.