Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, December 16, 2022, 08:07 (496 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Everything you and I have written depends on which version of God you choose. Adler and I see God with definite purpose to produce humans. Your imagined God is all over the place, not sure where He is actually going with an endpoint up for grabs. (dhw's bold)

dhw: You specify over and over again that your imagined God’s one and only purpose was to produce humans plus food. In pursuing this goal, YOU say: “He is responsible for all the messy aspects of evolution. Yes, He is. The whole of evolution is a messy process of successes and failures. And the result, us, is a most unexpected result.” That = going all over the place. “Endpoint” is not identical to “purpose”, and with a few hundred (thousand?) million years to go, it’s still up for grabs.

DAVID: A continuing evolution, ad lib, is over. We are the end point and control the Earth. 'New' species are still found, but they were always there. An endpoint of evolution can certainly be the underlying purpose.

It can be, but why don’t you just stick to purpose, as you have done in the first (now bolded) statement above, which is unambiguous, though you have left out your belief that we plus food were his ONLY purpose? If your God’s ONLY purpose was us plus food, according to YOU, his form of evolution is a total mess.

dhw: I present three imaginings: 1) is your own version: God’s purpose is to produce humans plus food, and to achieve this, he conducts experiments. You agree, but describe his experiments as mistakes, failures, wrong choices, and incomprehensibly insist that his experiments are not experiments. 2) a compromise: God enjoys creating (you were once certain that this was true), and has new ideas as he proceeds. Humans plus food therefore become a purpose late on in the process. No mistakes, failures, mess etc. 3) God’s enjoyment is enhanced by creating a free-for-all which provides unexpected results (though he may dabble). There are no mistakes, failures, wrong choices in any of my versions apart from the first if that is how you wish to regard targeted experimentation. Each version is purposeful, and the only messy one is yours.

DAVID: I'll stick with (1) but interpret your distortions differently: any evolution, biological or otherwise is messy. In the biological form, everyone must eat, so there is competition and Darwin's survival of the fittest, creating dead ends of less fit.

What “distortions”? I’m pleased to see you supporting Darwin, and even more pleased that you are now supporting my proposal of experimentation, which you have vehemently excluded in the past. So we now have your God wanting to create a being like himself, not knowing initially how to do it and therefore designing all kinds of creatures to see whether they will eventually become what he’s aiming for. I wouldn’t use your vocabulary (messy, mistakes, wrong choices, failures) but I understand your doing so, and this very humanized vision you now have of your God offers you a clear explanation for the history of evolution as we know it.

DAVID: I'll repeat, evolving toward any goal is messy, by definition.

dhw: Evolution: “the process by which living organisms have developed from earlier ancestral forms.” Yes or no?

DAVID: Yes, by God's design.

That is not part of the definition (and nor is "messy"), but since we are discussing a possible God’s purposes and methods, not his existence, then by all means tack it on as the believer’s version, and I will add the parenthesis “if he exists” as the agnostic’s version.

dhw: Extinction (“dead ends”) is an historical fact, but it only becomes “messy” if you try to define evolution as a messy process in which an all-powerful God designs every organism with one single goal in mind, although 99% of his designs are mistakes.

DAVID: Yes, 99% are gone, not to be mourned or called mistakes of design. They had to be someone's lunch What defines real evolution is all the loss. Momentary errors as the process continues to advance.

It’s YOU who call them mistakes, failures, wrong choices! “Momentary errors” are mistakes, and extinction is permanent, not momentary! And it is not just the fact that they were someone’s lunch that caused extinction. Predators as well as prey disappeared, and they did so when conditions changed: climate, environment, imbalance in the ecosystem, no lunch available, no breathable air, extreme heat, extreme cold etc. What defines evolution is the species that are NOT lost, i.e. which survive and develop into new species!

Thank you again for accepting my theory of experimentation. Perhaps that will enable us to put an end to this long-drawn-out discussion, except that the “more miscellany thread” threatens to prolong it.