Back to theodicy and David's theories (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Thursday, January 28, 2021, 11:09 (1393 days ago)

The “miscellany” has unfortunately taken us back to your theory of evolution

DAVID: We still see that mistakes can happen when molecules are acting and BIR is not a perfect solution. Perhaps perfection is impossible even with God in charge of possible designs.

dhw: Perhaps your God did not seek perfection.

DAVID: I think He couldn't. >

dhw: Interesting that your God is incapable of designing what he wants, tries hard to make up for it (but often fails), and yet you always moan that my hypothesis of a God who designs exactly what he wants (namely the free-for-all which has produced the higgledy-piggledy history of evolution) makes him seem “weak”.

DAVID: Now we are returning to God's personality discussion. I think if Him as highly purposeful with the process of evolution absolutely directed toward the production of humans with big brain consciousness. The broad bush is for econiches to provide food for all and is practical and not higgledy-piggledy. Your failure to see God's purpose muddles your approach.

There is no way round discussing God’s personality if you want to discuss the problem of theodicy. And so once again you have returned to the theory we agreed to leave unmentioned: that your God’s sole purpose was to directly design H. sapiens, but you have no idea why he would have directly designed millions of earlier non-human life forms and econiches, 99% of which had no connection with humans. Your inability to explain why he would use such a method to fulfil such a purpose should alert you to the possibility that your theory is wrong, and you add to the illogicality of your interpretation of evolution with your insistence that a God who designs what he wants to design is weaker than a God who is unable to design what he wants to design, and tries but often fails to correct the errors.

DAVID: You still don't understand the biochemistry of life with high-speed reactions. The molecules are free to make mistakes to have the system work at the speed it does. This design we have works, as evolutionary history shows. That is a positive not your persistent negative dark view.

You are clinging to what works, and deliberately ignoring the consequences of what doesn’t work. Why do you think your God would have tried but failed to prevent those consequences, and left it to us humans to do what he couldn’t do? As a doctor, you have faced up to the reality of what doesn’t work, so why do you ignore it when you discuss the nature of your God? The question here is not what is negative or positive, but what is the most likely explanation for the facts we have? Why is your version of a God who can’t control his creation stronger than my hypothetical God who has created precisely what he wanted to create – namely, a free-for-all, in which all life forms do or do not find different ways to survive and to evolve?

dhw: You drew our attention to catastrophes and to humans upsetting the balance of Nature. This raises the interesting question of whether your God deliberately designed catastrophes and indeed all the environmental changes, global and local, that have accompanied (and I suggest also triggered) both extinctions and the arrival of new species. I’m not sure what you mean by “overall weather patterns”, so perhaps you could be more precise. Do you think he controls/controlled all the environmental changes, global and local, that accompanied (triggered) evolutionary changes, or do you think he set up a system through which environmental changes were/are left to chance?'

DAVID: I don't much of anything chance-caused. I see God in tight control. La Nina and El Nino are recognized Pacific patterns that control all weather over the globe. Monsoon rain patterns are another.

So purely out of interest, do you think your God fiddled with the growth of the north and northeastern portion of Tibet, as follows?

Asian weather patterns

QUOTE: “…. the growth of the north and northeastern portion of Tibet was the most important factor because it increased rainfall, especially winter rainfall, over eastern Asia where dry winter conditions existed before.
"This allowed the development of a stable, wet and warm climate, conducive to the evolution of vast and varied plants and animal species which formed the biodiversity hotspot known today for supplying more than a billion people with fresh water and providing ingredients used for lifesaving pharmaceutical drugs. Rare species of monkey, tiger, leopard, bear, fox, mongoose, hedgehog, seal, dolphin, and sea lion all live in this abundant ecosystem.”

And there you have a perfectly clear indication of how environmental conditions trigger speciation. Of course the question for you once more is why, in the course of all the similar environmental changes in the past, your God would have created a vast variety of econiches and species, 99% of which no longer exist and had no connection with humans, if the process of evolution was “absolutely directed toward the production of humans with big brain consciousness”. Off we go again...