Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, February 12, 2023, 17:26 (439 days ago) @ dhw

Evolving a universe for life

DAVID: dhw appears to have little recognition God evolves everything; here is how the universe it was done:
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/quantum-reason-neutral-atoms/?utm_campaign=swab...

DAVID: ALL OF IT IS EVOLUTION!!! GOD EVOLVES EVERYTHING. It is ALWAYS His pattern of creation. dhw take notice!! Complex quantum rules are skipped so dhw is comfortable.

dhw: Of course the universe evolved! Just as we evolved and every other life form evolved. I doubt if there is a single atheist who does not believe that the universe and life evolved. What I object to is the theory that your all-powerful, all-purposeful, all-knowing God would deliberately design 200 billion trillion stars plus all the dead ones, and millions of now extinct organisms, knowing in advance that 99% of his designs would be mistakes and failed experiments, because all he wanted to produce was one species (homo sapiens) and its food.

Let's stay with the multiple stars comment first: Supernovas supply all heavier elements beyond hydrogen, a fact in cosmologic science. God had the stars make the necessary elements. Secondly, we are here. God achieved making the most complex item in the universe, our brain. God evolved it.

DAVID: God's 'mistakes' actually progress in any evolutionary system. (dhw's bold)

dhw: […] how many of God’s evolutionary systems do you know? The evolutionary system we know tells us that 99% per cent of his designs came to a dead end, i.e. made no further progress, and that is why you call them mistakes and failures. Please stop contradicting yourself.

DAVID: You keep ignoring: BB, evolve universe, evolve Milky Way, start life on Earth which evolves Earth, evolves life!!!

dhw: Answered above, but in any case your comment is not an answer to mine.

The answer is all evolutionary processes have dead ends, and all you do is concentrate on them as if they stifle advances.

DAVID: Why do you ignore Raup? He described evolution as 99.0% failure to survive, didn't he?

dhw: How many more times? We agree that 99% failed to survive! But you say their failure to survive was due to your God making mistakes, conducting failed experiments, because none of them led to his only goal, which was to design us and our food. And you blame him for the messy history of evolution.

Raup says it was not mistakes in design but bad luck! The design failed a necessary adaptation to changes. It is a design fault in a lack of adaptability.

DAVID: No blame. Failure to survive is part and parcel of the system He chose to and was successful with.

dhw: How many more times? “Failure to survive” is not synonymous with your God making mistakes! According to your theory, his system produced 99% mistakes and 1% success. And you have said explicitly: “Once God appears, He is responsible for all the messy aspects of evolution, Yes, He is. The whole of evolution is a messy process of successes and failures. [...].” (11 December 2022) Unless you consider mistakes and failures and mess to be praiseworthy, I would suggest that responsibility = blame.

God ran evolution. He is responsible for all its warts.

Permian mass extinction – not so widespread (transferred from “More miscellany)

DAVID: this fits my approach that God was not fully in charge of all factors. He took advantage of these changes to advance evolution.

dhw: But unfortunately, because these conditions were unsuitable for the purpose you impose on him, 99% of his easy handling apparently produced mistakes and failed experiments. And what is even more degrading is that according to you, he actually knew that he was going to make mistakes but still went ahead! And so we come back to the question you dodge, and dodge, and dodge again:

dhw: Why do think countless mistakes, failed experiments, mess, lack of control, dependence on luck etc. are the attributes of an all-powerful, strong, always-in-control God, whereas a God who gets what he wants without making any mistakes is to be considered “wimpy”? .

Not ever dodged. Purposely distorted by you. My all-powerful, all-knowing all-purposeful God used a method of his choice to produce us!! Your play by free-for-all God not=in-full- control, changes course with new suddenly developed ideas, and is not a wimp??!! And under His control your God did not have a 99.9% Raup failure rate? They magically disappeared?

dhw: He stays on course by designing 99% of life forms that are off course, but he wishes to produce his mistakes and to conduct experiments he knows will fail. That apparently makes him all-powerful and all-knowing. My three alternative theistic explanations of evolution (successful experimentation, new ideas, or a free-for-all) offer us a God who remains all-powerful and all-purposeful (but not all-knowing, as he wants to try out new things – which does not “mean mind-changing” if his purpose is to learn something new), and who produces everything he wishes to produce without making any mistakes or conducting any failed experiments. Why is your mistake-making blunderer more godlike than my faultless alternatives?

You have totally left the God from the Bible we should be discussing. Did your fuzzy God have any idea from the beginning he would produce humans??