Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, January 20, 2023, 16:05 (671 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I won't accept that necessary endpoints, which you call, and I agree are failures, are terrible results. 99% of all species have failed in the past. God ran the system successfully. We are here and God is not weak, bumbling, or stupid: He chose the system warts and all and made it achieve His goals. Perhaps it is the only system that would work.

dhw: You attacked my alternative theories on the grounds that they made God human. I have answered that criticism above. Your response changes the subject, and is full of inaccuracies. It is you who call the 99% of experiments failures. I have never mentioned “necessary endpoints”, and I don’t know what you are referring to. Anything necessary is not a failure or mistake.

You need a clear view of living evolution. It is in a progressive evolution the past gives way to the future. Failure becomes a new success, therefore necessary endpoints.

dhw: It is you who insist that your God set out to create us and our food, and proceeded to specially design all the life forms, 99% of which had no connection with his goal. That makes him weak and bumbling. In two of my alternatives, a) his experiments are successful and he continues to develop them in his quest to create a being like himself (plus food), or (b) he gets new ideas as he goes along. No failures, no bumbling. You dismiss them because you say they humanise him.

A process with all success is not seen in our evolutionary history. A real God does not get
new ideas like the average human does. Still humanizing God to fit your prejudices.

dhw: Hence my first comment above and my next question:

dhw: Why is it less “human” to achieve a goal despite lack of control of conditions, and despite countless mess-ups, mistakes and failed experiments, than it is to achieve a goal without making any mistakes or conducting any failed experiments?

Not the history we are discussing. Please come back from la-la land. I view God in charge, ran evolution, and we must analyze the history of that factual event.

DAVID: Stil pursuing a humanistic God who experiments with no goal in mind. If we assume God is totally in charge, we have to accept the history of evolution in an honest way. It is not a direct approach. It takes time and 99% of all forms disappear. That God chose this way does not make any lesser of a God. IMHO your twisted theories of God produce a God very few religious folk would accept.

dhw: And so you continue to dodge the question. In my first theory, his goal is the same as yours – to create a being with thought patterns, emotions etc. like his own (though you refuse to accept any thought patterns if they differ from your rigid preconceptions); in the second he experiments on a journey of discovery – he invents life to see what he can do with it. There are many human equivalents of this process, and it is a goal in itself. A free-for-all is similar – to see what will happen if he invents a mechanism that can do its own designing. In none of these alternatives does your God make mistakes, make a mess, fail, make wrong decisions. IMHO your twisted theory of a bumbling God who makes mistake after mistake is one that “very few religious folk would accept.”

Once again, a totally humanized God. What is dodged? I reject your views of God. My view is simple, God chose to evolve humans and made that messy system work. That the system is messy doesn't reduce God in any way. We are on this subject because you raised it years ago and I decided to revisit it.