Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, January 26, 2023, 10:59 (455 days ago) @ David Turell

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!

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

That is not a definition of evolution! It’s an interpretation! Just like Dawkins saying God is a delusion. Do you see that as a definition of God?

dhw: 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. […] evolution requires failure to survive so more complex, more competent to survive forms appear.

dhw: […] 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.

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

Assuming God exists, of course he created evolution. What is daft is the idea that despite being all-powerful, he forced himself into making mistake after mistake, and failure after failure before he could achieve his one and only goal.

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)?

DAVID: Yes!!!

So throughout past eternity he knew all about the nematode-killing fungus, the weaverbird’s nest, the opossum’s feigned death, every species that ever lived, all the mistakes he was going to make, all the environmental conditions over which he would have no control – never a single new idea. They were all there in his mind, but for past eternity he did nothing about them until eventually – as he already knew he would – he decided to stage a Big Bang and get it all started, performed his mistakes and failed experiments etc. etc. I wonder if anyone else “understands your concept of God”.

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?

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

Why should enjoyment not mean the same to him as it does to us? Why are you so afraid of the idea that it might give him pleasure to create all the wonders that you and I find so fascinating and enriching? (See Nature’s Wonders on the “More miscellany thread”.)

DAVID: 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.

DAVID: How can I know God's reasoning?

So why do you pretend that you do? Why are you so sure that he reasoned to himself: “In order to create what I wanner create, I gotta make millions of mistakes and conduct millions of failed experiments”? Why is this more “reasonable” than him thinking: “I sure do like the idea of creating lots of different living things, and it’ll be mighty interesting to see how my idea develops”?