Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, March 08, 2023, 09:24 (413 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Failure to survive at a 99.9% rate is historical fact. I believe God used evolution to create His desired endpoint, us.

dhw: Of course it’s historical fact, and that is why it is so absurd to argue that your all-powerful God deliberately designed every single life form in order to design us and our food, although 99% of the life forms he designed were irrelevant to us and our food!

DAVID: The 99.9% were part of the necessary mechanics of living evolution. So in your view we simply go from bacteria to us without loss of life? 99.9% were not irrelevant, they formed the process of evolution.

Necessary for what? You never stop dodging. Your God’s one and only purpose was to create H. sapiens plus our food, but 99% of his creations did not lead to us or our food, so you call them his “mistakes” and “failed experiments”.

DAVID: God knew when He used an evolutionary creation method, there would be a 99.9 % loss rate. No mistakes, no blundering.

It is YOU who have called them mistakes and failed experiments! That is what we’re arguing about!

DAVID: Your God uses free-for-all for entertainment and experiments in a directionless manner. Purely human.

Your dismissal of my alternatives does not make your theory any the less nonsensical. However, none of my alternatives are directionless, and I do not use the word “entertainment” but your own word “enjoy”, as when you tell us you are certain that he enjoys creating or he wouldn’t do it.

dhw: if your God does not control conditions, he is limited to designing new species which can cope with those conditions, even though they have no connection with his one and only purpose, which you say is us and our food.

DAVID: […] God was never limited by environment since the Earth's temperature has always been in a narrow life-supporting range since snowball Earth disappeared.

You said your God was not in control of such environmental changes as forests turning into deserts, and you don’t even know if he controlled Chixculub. You praise his brilliance in being able to design new species to cope with every change, but he can only design what is allowed by the new environment! For example, he couldn’t design us until the necessary oxygen was available.

DAVID: [..] Your cry of "luck" is a ghost of any logic. […].

dhw: It is you who keep harping on about Raup’s theory that survival is a matter of luck.

DAVID: Answered above. Raup's point was all organism's adaptability were limited. Organism's bad luck, not God's.

Of course it’s bad luck for the organisms that they couldn’t adapt to the new conditions because of your God’s faulty design! But LUCKILY 1% survived, so he could work on them to provide the continuity of evolution, until LUCK provided him with the conditions (the Cambrian) needed to fulfil his sole purpose. But see the next item:

The Cambrian

dhw: […] For you the creation of species de novo is crucial evidence for God’s very existence and for your constant attacks on Darwin, but of course it makes nonsense of your theory that we (plus food) were your all-powerful God’s purpose from the very beginning, and so he had to create countless life forms that had nothing to do with us (plus food).

DAVID: You just can't help yourself. In my belief God chose to evolve us creating 'countless lifeforms' on the way, which surprise, created our food supply.

Only the 1% evolved into our food supplies. The 99% were dead ends that did not lead to us or our food. That’s why you call them “mistakes”.

Bipedalism

DAVID: The bipedal body is not fit to stay in trees. They were forced by their new design to be terrestrial.

dhw: So one morning a group of anthropoids woke up to find themselves with straightened backs and legs, which forced them out of the trees and onto the ground. But even then your God knew he’d have to keep popping in to operate on hominins and hominids and homos till he could get what he wanted (us plus food), though he needn’t have bothered with any of them because he could have created us de novo if he’d wanted to. I'm surprised that you think even God can understand your theories.

DAVID: God and I know He speciates. You don't know how to think about God as I do.

And I very much doubt if God knows how to think about himself as you do, with all the blunders you attribute to him. Now please tell us if the account I have given above corresponds to your theory. I don’t want to be accused of distorting it.