Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, January 21, 2023, 08:47 (433 days ago) @ David Turell

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: 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.

DAVID: 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.

I don’t suppose many of us would disagree that the past becomes the future. However, failures are the dead ends which do not become a success. In your theory, 99% of your God’s designs had nothing to do with his one and only purpose. Only the 1% evolved into us and our food. The rest are only “failures” because you insist that his one and only intention from the very beginning was to design us and our food! But even then, as in my first experimentation theory (see below), they and he do not need to be classified in this derogatory manner.

dhw: […]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.

DAVID: 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.

You keep trotting out the same mantras. Our evolutionary history shows vast numbers of organisms that have come and gone and did not lead to us or our food. Your theory is that 99% of these were failed experiments by your God. You refuse to accept that “failure” denotes human-like incompetence. One of my alternatives is that your God had new ideas as he went along. That would explain the comings and goings without calling them failures. Hence the next question which you constantly refuse to answer

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?

DAVID: 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.

The above theory has God in charge and running evolution, and it explains the history of the 99% of designs which did not lead to us and our food without calling them “mistakes” or “failures”. So why is it more godlike to make mistakes and to design failures than to have new ideas, none of which are failures?

DAVID: A real God does not get new ideas like the average human does. Still humanizing God to fit your prejudices.

So a real God just makes mistakes and conducts failed experiments as he struggles to fulfil his one and only purpose.

dhw (after repeating three alternative theories): 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.”

DAVID: Once again, a totally humanized God.

How can these versions be more human than a God who needs to make 99 mistakes for every 1 success? And who depends on luck to provide him with the conditions he needs to achieve his aim?

DAVID: What is dodged?

The above questions.

DAVID: 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.

This subject is your theory of evolution, which I have been questioning for years. Originally, you claimed that all your God’s designs were “absolute requirements” for us and our food. Eventually you agreed that 99% were not, and so your new theory is that they were mistakes. He was responsible for what you now call the “mess”. This has nothing to do with my alternative explanations of evolution. You are trying to defend your new theory, which makes your God a weak bumbler (the description you apply to my alternatives, in all of which he is in charge and gets what he wants without any mistakes or failures). And to add insult to injury, you stick to your own derogatory and illogical theory (an all-powerful blundering God who depends on luck), and then accuse me of prejudice when I offer different logical alternatives. :-(


Complete thread:

 RSS Feed of thread

powered by my little forum