[Mormons and Evolution] 12/02/2005 03:13:19 PM
Man, this is starting to sound like a New Cool Thang thread.
Now about your cake. If God could produce a fully formed cake or mix the (unspecified) ingredients and let nature take it toll (this toll being huge amounts of suffering, waste and a not too intelligently designed product) which should we choose? The answer seems all too obvious to me. We can only make EC sound like a good option if we trivialize the waste and/or postulate some undefined mechanisms to get what we want.
These are the reasons why I hate analogies so much. They too easily serve to divert attention away the real issues at hand. (No offense intended to anybody here. Geoff, the king of analogies, knows about my undying hatred as much as anybody.)
DE is quite efficient, but efficiency is only a virtue to those who are limited in power, resources and/or personal investment.
We can allow nature to do the "heavy lifting" but this is exactly what I addressed in the post. God doesn't get credit and we are left wondering why He simply didn't do it the best way which he (presumably) could have. This is why special creationism and ID are so attractive to theists, because they avoid the negative implications of these questions.
There are two things which Jared wrote which I want to address:
1) Wasteful doesn't simply mean "efficient use of materials" in this context. Wasteful also includes the waste of life in the inherently competitive nature of natural selection and the inevitability of unintelligent and even immoral design. This is what separates evolution from the lifeless expanses of heaven.
2) I have also suggested that eternal progression can be extended to less lifeforms, but I don't think that this is good enough. This response doesn't address the natural evils of unintelligent and immoral design (by immoral I mean the numerous examples of infanticide, rape and murder which is so common to life and atheists are so fond of pointing out). We are also left with a situation in which God isn't really creating anything in particular at all.
Posted by Jeffrey Giliam
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Posted by Jeffrey D. Giliam to Mormons and Evolution at 12/02/2005 03:13:19 PM
Now about your cake. If God could produce a fully formed cake or mix the (unspecified) ingredients and let nature take it toll (this toll being huge amounts of suffering, waste and a not too intelligently designed product) which should we choose? The answer seems all too obvious to me. We can only make EC sound like a good option if we trivialize the waste and/or postulate some undefined mechanisms to get what we want.
These are the reasons why I hate analogies so much. They too easily serve to divert attention away the real issues at hand. (No offense intended to anybody here. Geoff, the king of analogies, knows about my undying hatred as much as anybody.)
DE is quite efficient, but efficiency is only a virtue to those who are limited in power, resources and/or personal investment.
We can allow nature to do the "heavy lifting" but this is exactly what I addressed in the post. God doesn't get credit and we are left wondering why He simply didn't do it the best way which he (presumably) could have. This is why special creationism and ID are so attractive to theists, because they avoid the negative implications of these questions.
There are two things which Jared wrote which I want to address:
1) Wasteful doesn't simply mean "efficient use of materials" in this context. Wasteful also includes the waste of life in the inherently competitive nature of natural selection and the inevitability of unintelligent and even immoral design. This is what separates evolution from the lifeless expanses of heaven.
2) I have also suggested that eternal progression can be extended to less lifeforms, but I don't think that this is good enough. This response doesn't address the natural evils of unintelligent and immoral design (by immoral I mean the numerous examples of infanticide, rape and murder which is so common to life and atheists are so fond of pointing out). We are also left with a situation in which God isn't really creating anything in particular at all.
Posted by Jeffrey Giliam
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Posted by Jeffrey D. Giliam to Mormons and Evolution at 12/02/2005 03:13:19 PM
posted by Christian Y. Cardall at 3:12 PM
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