Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, January 25, 2023, 19:06 (666 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: My comment above stands. Evolution is a system that produces failures to survive at a 99% rate. Yet the result is success. We are here to argue about it. It is not incompetent to use a system that by definition requires a high failure rate and succeed with it.

dhw: Where did you find a definition of evolution that says 99% of its products must be failures? Stop making things up!

From the only evolution example we have, Raup's comment in his book: page 4, "99.9% failure rate". Make up? Never!

dhw: According to you, your all-powerful God invented a system which forced him into 99% mistakes and failed experiments before coming up with the only thing he wanted to create (us plus our food). And you don’t know his reasons for inventing such a system. But in your view, your all-powerful God could not possibly have invented this same system because he actually wanted to design or provide a mechanism to design all the life forms that you call “mistakes”.

dhw: Experiments that improve the original invention are not failures, and new ideas can grow out of preceding ideas, e.g. legs can be transformed into flippers or arms – precisely as happens in evolution. That is not “failure”. If your version of your God’s evolution was not restricted to a single purpose and “course” (us and our food), then his experiments would not have to be classed as failures!

DAVID: The bold makes no sense. Putting aside your discussion of appendages, since the discussion is survival and failure not adaptations, evolution requires failure to survive so more complex, more competent to survive forms appear.

dhw: The “appendages” are examples of new ideas, which you pooh-pooh. If your all-powerful, first-cause God exists, it is he, not evolution that decides he needs to make mistakes – or rather it is you who decide that he decides he needs to make mistakes. And understandably, you cannot think of a single reason why he should take the daft decision you insist he took.

'Daft' is your tiny human brain at work. Assuming God in change, evolution is what He created. Live with it.

DAVID (re my alternative theories without "mistakes":) What God of what religion is that?

dhw: What religion depicts God as an experimenter with a 99% failure rate, who depends on luck to fulfil his only purpose?

DAVID: The religion David uses is his own creation.

dhw: So what was the point of your question to me? Religion is clearly irrelevant.

DAVID: Before the BB God was planning on humans. You don't understand my concept of God.

dhw: No, I don’t. Are you now telling me that planning humans was all he had been thinking about for the whole of eternity before the BB? So what made him suddenly think of the BB? Was that the new idea? This whole argument is becoming farcical. A God who has new ideas is apparently a human bungler, but a God whose work has a 99% failure rate is divinely all-powerful.

DAVID: God does not need new ideas!!! We have discussed multiple BB's in the past.

dhw: Why do you say “need”? No matter how many BBs or life forms he may have designed, are you saying he had every single one planned throughout the past eternity of his existence (if he exists)?

Yes!!!

dhw: Why are you so afraid of the idea that your God might enjoy thinking up new things, and this enjoyment might be one of the thought patterns and emotions he has handed down to us?

He handed our emotions down to us. He does not necessarily have them in our form.

DAVID: God did exactly what He wanted to do, using the method He wanted to use, all decided before He made the universe.

dhw: GOD: “I only wanna create David Turell and his breakfast, so I’m gonna deliberately create millions of useless critters that ain’t got nothin’ to do with him an’ his breakfast, so he can tell the world that all my mistakes an’ failed experiments prove how clever I was ter create him an’ his breakfast.”

DAVID: Ignored. The past 99% plus the survivors resulted in me and my food. Evolution is a continuous invented process of increasing complexity. Without the 99%, I would still be an amoeba.

dhw: You have turned your "99% failure rate" into a 99% success rate. It’s without the 1% that you would still be an amoeba with nothing but bacteria and nematodes for your breakfast.

DAVID: Exactly. We are a result of the 1%.

dhw: So why did you say the 99% plus the survivors resulted in you and your food? Ah well, at least you are now back with your bumbler, who forces himself to make mistake after mistake, though you have no idea why.

How can I know God's reasoning?