Return to David's theory of evolution and theodicy (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 28, 2023, 17:19 (512 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Evil is a tiny part of the dog-eat-dog world God gave us.

You continue to minimize the extent of evil in your desperate attempt to avoid the question of why an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God would have produced it.

DAVID: You prefer to think of it as a battle for survivability which is a correct view, but not as Darwin viewed it, a driver of evolution. Everyone must eat, just like your 'humans plus food' pejorative, which shows us the emptiness of your approach. Eating constantly is imperative.

Do you honestly believe I am not aware that everyone must eat? The “pejorative” concerns your illogical theory that your God’s one and only purpose was to design us and our food, and therefore he proceeded to design 99% of species and foods that had no connection with us. Stop dodging! (See also the “Miscellany” thread.) And of course the battle for survival drives evolution: every species has evolved different ways of adapting to or exploiting new conditions in order to survive! Those that cannot do so become extinct.

DAVID: […] I've always thought God created a dog-eat-dog world. One purpose, another was humans.

dhw: You have always acknowledged the dog-eat-dog element of life’s history. But you have always claimed that the creation of humans plus food was his only purpose. That is why you consider the 99% of past species to have been failures – because they did not lead to humans plus food.

DAVID: A totally an incorrect interpretation. The 99.9% loss is simply a part of the culling nature of evolution. What survived led to humans plus food as a necessary endpoint.

Please explain why you consider the 99% to have been failures, and why you consider your God’s method of achieving his one and only goal to have been messy, cumbersome and inefficient.

dhw: But if his purpose was to create a dog-eat-dog world, the 99% of losses were the direct consequence of the free-for-all he intended to create from the beginning. Whether he designed the 99% directly, or gave them the ability to design themselves, makes no difference. Dog-eat-dog, producing an ever changing variety of “dogs”, was the purpose, and so every dog was relevant to that purpose. Now ask yourself what was the purpose of dog-eat-dog, if it was not to provide enjoyment of creation and interest in the ever changing products of creation.

DAVID: Totally misses the point. Whether animal or vegetable, all must have constant nutrition, which creates constant competition.

Correct, and blindingly obvious. And if God exists, I think we can assume that it was his intention to create the dog-eat-dog battle for survival, as above. You have now told us that he had two purposes: to create the battle, and to create humans plus food. So please tell us why you think he wanted to create a battle which would result in the loss of 99 out of 100 species, bearing in mind that these had no connection with his other purpose.