Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, February 01, 2023, 14:21 (659 days ago) @ David Turell

Raup’s failure rate

dhw: Since you insist that your God specially designed all those species, it is your God who produces “failed species”. However, failure to survive is not synonymous with “failed species”.

DAVID: I agree with the last point: failure to survive teaches how to avoid failure from the examples given.

How nice to know that your all-powerful God learns from his mistakes, even though you insist he knew exactly what to do right from the start. Since your God is now able to learn, perhaps in due course you may agree that he might get new ideas as he learns.

DAVID: Remember Raup said 99+% failed to survive. I simply use his point. Stop criticizing my God. God can have a goal!!! And He can choose to evolve us, as history says He did, under the rule of mine, God is in charge of all events.

I keep reminding YOU that 99% fail to survive, and it is because you insist that your God’s only goal was to design us and our food that you say their non-survival = failure! If he is in charge of all events, every “failure” must have been due entirely to his mistakes! I’m not criticizing your God. You are! Unless you consider mistakes and failed experiments to be a compliment!

dhw: [The failures] do not “allow” progression! They are dead ends. They cannot be “improved”! It is the one per cent of survivors that allow progression and improvement. And you continue to ignore the argument that if it was God’s intention that different life forms should come and go,then their “failure to survive” does not make them “failed species” or mistakes or failed experiments. See yet again my alternative theories below.

No need to repeat them here, but well worth repeating the question you dodge over and over again: why do you consider a God whose work consists of 99% mistakes and failures to be less human and more godlike than a God who achieves precisely what he wants to achieve, without any mistakes or failures?

DAVID: I think you vaguely understand evolution succeeds through a succession of failures. The bold is correct…

The exact opposite. Evolution does not succeed through a succession of failures. What you call failures are dead ends, but if it was your God’s INTENTION to create a vast variety of life forms that came and went (e.g. in a free-for-all), you cannot call them failures! Evolution does not progress through its dead ends but through the 1% of life forms that survive.

DAVID: An all-powerful God can design for any condition or around any condition, as extremophiles show in their obvious success rate. And they are part of the ecosystem that supplies our food.

As usual, you have left out the fact that (a) you believe your God did not control the conditions but responded to them, and (b) his dependence on conditions resulted in his designing countless species which you regard as “failed experiments” and “mistakes”, because they were irrelevant to what you insist was his only purpose: to produce us and our food. I do not regard a God whose pursuit of his goal results in a 99% failure rate as “all-powerful”. And I would question whether our food supply is dependent on microorganisms that survive in extreme conditions from which we do not acquire our foods. But that is a minor issue, since you are still left with your God’s responsibility for what you call the “mess” caused by his mistakes.