Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, February 02, 2023, 11:29 (447 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.

dhw: How nice to know that your all-powerful God learns from his mistakes […] perhaps in due course you may agree that he might get new ideas as he learns.

DAVID: I was commenting at the human level. God always knows what will work and what will fail.

You were replying to a comment on your God’s failures. I didn’t know humans had learned how to design species! And why he would design species after species, knowing that 99% of them would be mistakes? Any ideas?

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. (dhw’s bold. See later.)

dhw: […] 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!

DAVID: The terms annoy you. I view God as knowing who will succeed and who will fail in advance. Failure makes room for more advanced steps in any evolutionary process.

Sorry, but I just can’t believe your God knew he’d be making mistake after mistake but still went ahead, which suggests he is stupid as well as incompetent. Failure does not “make room” for any advances. There’d have been plenty of room if he hadn’t knowingly designed all his “failures”! Only the surviving 1 per cent produce advances.

DAVID: My very purposeful God knows exactly where He is going in evolution of life and plans it all, including all dead ends which equals failures. […]

He has one purpose (us plus food) and plans 99% of mistakes that have no connection with his purpose. Curiouser and curiouser. You once said his purpose for creating us might have been to have us admire his work. Perhaps you should write a hymn in praise of his 99% failure rate. And now, yet again, please tell me why your blundering God is less human and more godlike than a God who – as in my alternatives - knows exactly what he wants and creates it without any mistakes or failures.

DAVID: I think you vaguely understand evolution succeeds through a succession of failures. […]

dhw: The exact opposite. […] 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: Exactly my point!!

So why did you say evolution succeeds through a succession of failures???

DAVID: Thank you, except for your weird idea that a purposeful God would allow a loss of complete control with an aimless free-for-all. Remember it was your idea years ago God should not have evolved us. […]

I have never said he should not have evolved us! I have said it made no sense for him to design countless life forms, natural wonders etc. that had no connection with what you say was his only purpose (us plus food). It would have made more sense to create us directly, but I believe in evolution, and so I propose different theistic reasons for the evolution that actually happened. One is experimentation, which you rejected but now embrace, adding your view that your God messed it up with his 99% “failures”. You reject the voyage of discovery, which is the purpose behind the “new ideas” theory and the “free-for-all” theory. Nothing weird, no mistakes, no failures.

DAVID: God designs for all conditions. See Permian extinction presented today.

Permian mass extinction

DAVID: I'm going to stick with my theory that these events were natural, not under God's control, and He was powerful enough to work around them. Remember He knew they were coming.

So these huge events were not under your God’s control, although in the bold above, “God is in charge of all events”. However, yet again, you repeat your belief that he was forced by conditions not of his making to design mistake after mistake (species etc. irrelevant to his sole purpose). If he knew what conditions were coming, why did he bother? He might as well have waited until chance provided him with the conditions he wanted, as you have actually suggested, since you say we and our food are descended from Cambrian species that had no precursors. Ugh, 3.X billion years wasting his time on mistakes he knew he was going to make, when he could just have waited for the Cambrian, which he knew was coming! Why are you making a fool of your God?