Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Wednesday, June 16, 2021, 19:30 (1046 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Amazing! Your objection exactly describes God's evolutionary process!!!

dhw: No it doesn’t. The combination of bolded beliefs exactly describes your interpretation of the evolutionary process, and you can find no logical explanation for it, which at the very least suggests that your interpretation may be wrong.

I am not interpreting the evolutionary process, but simply accepting the history as God's work. It is your refusal to accept that approach that is totally illogical.

DAVID: You are again just slicing evolution into unrelated segments. The term evolution requires continuity.

dhw: The continuity consists in the concept of common descent – i.e. all organisms except the first descended from existing organisms. The huge bush of past life with its millions of life forms, econiches, natural wonders etc. was for the past, and so it is blatantly absurd to say that every single branch and twig of it was “required to support our current population”.

Distortion. Only the current bush supports current life. And yes, past supports past, but he continuity is on changing living forms by designed evolution.

Complaint about theoretical math
QUOTE: "During the first years of modern mathematical physics and the construction of its two central pillars, quantum theory and relativity theory, Alfred North Whitehead warned, “There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.”

dhw: It’s worth noting that Whitehead was the great proponent of process theology, which finds God “in the process of becoming, rather than as the transcendent source of being”. An interesting quote: “God works like an artist attempting to win order and beauty out of opportunity. God is thus the ‘great companion – the fellow sufferer who understands.’” I’m not going to pretend that I understand the philosophical ins and outs of this, any more than I understand the worlds of quantum theory and relativity, but Whitehead’s concept of “becoming” suggests the direct opposite of David’s transcendent, know-it-all-from-the- beginning version of God. Theism can take many forms, even among devout believers. Question to David: would you call Whitehead's version of God weak, namby-pamby, or wishy-washy? (Quotations from Oxford Dictionary of World Religions)

None of those. My thought about God evolving everything from Big Bang on sort of fits Whitehead's thoughts although I understand the difference. He is not accepting God as a personage behind the process.