Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, January 27, 2023, 12:33 (664 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Evolution is a system that produces failures to survive at a 99% rate. […]. 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!

dhw: 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?

DAVID: It is an honest analysis of the only example we have.

It is not a definition. I have no doubt that Dawkins’ analysis is also honest, so do you accept it? I don’t have a problem with Raup’s interpretation, though. You are the one who should have a problem, since it directly contradicts your belief that your God is all-powerful and in full control, and instead leaves him depending on chance to provide him with survivors he can develop into humans plus our food.

dhw: 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!!!

dhw: 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”.

DAVID: More of your humanizing concepts of God. God is God and does what He wants when He wants.

In the above I have dealt solely with YOUR concept of God! If he exists, then of course he does what he wants. That is why it makes perfect sense to assume that he WANTED the history of life with its vast variety of comings and goings, and it makes no sense at all to assume that he wanted to make mistakes and conduct failed experiments.

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.

dhw: 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: Adler warns any thoughts about God should be presented allegorically.
And taken from the “poop” thread:
DAVID: Of course, He can be imagined allegorically to have enjoyment as we do.

You’ve used the term “allegorically” before, and I have no idea what “allegorical enjoyment” means. Nor do I care what Adler warns against. Why are you so afraid of the idea that God might enjoy creating all his wonders just as we enjoy creating our own wonders as well as admiring his?

dhw: 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”?

DAVID: Again, you want God to be a playwright like you have been, creating life by letting His imagination drift along. I know of no theist who would accept this view.

It’s akin to Whitehead’s process theology: “God is in the process of becoming…God in his consequent nature prehends the temporal world…and in this growing and changing nature, experiences the process, knowing and loving it. […] God works like an artist attempting to win order and beauty out of opportunity.” (Oxford Dictionary of World Religions) A couple of days ago, you asked what God of what religion I was talking about. I asked you the same question, and you replied that your religion (in which your God makes mistake after mistake) was your own creation. I’m not surprised.