Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, September 07, 2022, 11:44 (596 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: More of the same gloomy approach.

dhw: Congratulations on your highly original solution to the problem of theodicy: shut your eyes to the existence of bad. […]

DAVID: I'm just following the views in Salvo magazine. Your approach is why I offered the article about liberals and conservatives and how we are so opposite.

You are simply dodging the problem of theodicy by pretending there is no problem.

DAVID: (under “Predatory bacteria”): in God's eat or be eaten world these bacteria can be used […] The theodicy cranks will complain God should have made the world peaceful, but He chose not to for his own reasons. We have to work with it as it is, with our God-given brains.

Thank you for your acknowledgement that life is a constant free-for-all battle for survival (see also below). Theodicy is not a complaint, but a theological problem for theists who believe that God is all-good. Forgive me if I say that anyone who dismisses “bad” as a “minuscule portion of daily events” might well be regarded by others as a “crank”.

I raised three points which you have now answered:
DAVID: 1) God's goal and method is simple: design a series of stepwise forms until sapiens is reached.

You have managed yet again to forget that you cannot explain why, if sapiens plus econiches were his only goal, he first designed countless life forms and econiches that had no connection with that goal.

DAVID: 2) God's design totally explains the Cambrian Explosion.

Agreed. But your theory that we sapiens are descended from de novo Cambrian species contradicts your theory that his goal from the beginning was to design sapiens. There is no common descent from the beginning. Secondly, you have ignored the two possible explanations offered for the sudden appearance of new species (Darwin’s incomplete fossil record – new Ediacaran fossils have somewhat blurred the borderlines – and Shapiro’s theory of cellular intelligence).

DAVID: 3) ecosystems are highly structured free-for-all battles for food, nothing like your imagined God's weak free-for-all loss of control over evolution. Satisfied?

A free-for-all battle for survival does not suggest that every single life form in every single econiche for 3.X billion years was individually designed as an “absolute requirement” in preparation for H. sapiens and our econiches. And I am not suggesting “loss of control”, but that the “free-for-all” was what your God (if he exists) wanted and created.

dhw: Once more, please tell us which of your theories “make sense only to God”, i.e. not to you.[…]

DAVID: You are confused again. I fully accept history as God's creation. After that precise step, I then theorize about God's actions, and of course, they make sense to me if not you.

If God exists, of course history is his creation. It is your theories about his purpose and actions that I challenge. And your response is that you cannot know his reasons, which in your own words “make sense only to God”, so please tell us which of your theories make sense only to God.

DAVID: […] God knew how we would react to Him well before creating us. God creates without self-interest.

dhw: So apparently he didn’t want us to recognize him, and admire his work and have a relationship with him. [NB: this was David’s guess, not mine.] He made us for no reason at all. And so presumably he created the whole of life for no reason at all. He just knew in advance everything that would happen and how he would react to it. He did enjoy every individual act of creation [David’s guess], and he was interested in every individual creation [David’s guess], but he didn’t actually enjoy every individual act of creation until he’d done it, and wasn’t interested in every individual creation until it was already there. It would seem that your all-purposeful God never actually had a purpose at all when he created life and us!

DAVID: Once again you are trying to invent a personal God who cares about us. Adler warns the odds are 50/50.

Where have you found the word “care” in the above? It is you who brought up the subject of care: DAVID (More miscellany, August 30): “You love to talk about your weird God who doesn’t care about his goals. I can’t accept him.” In fact, I have never said he does or doesn’t “care”. It is you who get yourself in a twist over the subject (see also discussions on theodicy).

DAVID: His personal attributes do not influence His purposeful creations.

dhw: What purpose? How can you have a purpose that does not depend on your personal wishes, and how can you have personal wishes without personal attributes?

DAVID: All true. Again, God is a personage like no other person!!! I can only go so far recognizing God does everything He does for His own unknown-to-us reasons.

And so your theory that he designed every life form, econiche, natural wonder etc. for the one and only purpose of designing H. sapiens plus food, although the majority did not lead to us and our econiches, makes sense only to God and therefore not to you. Thank you for the clarification.