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

by David Turell , Sunday, August 20, 2023, 16:13 (459 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: How can I find reason why God chose to evolve us? Please answer. You agree He did.

dhw: Please stop dodging! The question is not why (if he exists) he chose to evolve us, but why, if his one and only purpose was to evolve (in your language = design) us and our food, did he choose to evolve (= design) 99 out of 100 life forms that had no connection with us?

This is your failure to reason: Raup described the only evolutionary process we have to study. It contained a 99.9% failure-to-survive rate. But it achieved producing human beings from Archaea in a continuous process of inventing forms and culling them through bad luck. It also kept life to a compatible size on a limited Earth area. Its appearance of common descent indicates present forms were related-to/descended-from past forms. That last fact means evolution is a continuum process. All existing on earth today are the 0.1% survivors. Life must ingest daily energy to survive. The Earth is covered with interlocking ecosystems from the diversity of life to feed all. The current human population is straining that supply to emphasize the point of the necessary diversity of life forms. God knew when He gave us the brain we have, that at some future point we would dominate the Earth and control it and begin to possibly overpopulate it. The diversity of life, which is what you question as 99.9% unnecessary, is our food supply!

dhw: It is a continuous process of comings and goings, in which the vast majority of organisms have led to a dead end. You claim that we are the endpoint, and agree that 99% of life forms had no connection with us or our food. There is therefore a 1% continuous line from the beginning to us and a 99% of lines that did not lead to us. As you know perfectly well, it is the deliberate design of the 99% which you yourself find inexplicable, as well as messy, cumbersome and inefficient. Please stop playing with language!

This is your process of messing with language, compared with my bolded statement above. Evolution is a very long arduous and cumbersome process, but it the process God used.

dhw: Yes, it is a continuous process of comings and goings. No, it is not totally connected to any endpoint. 99% has no connection with what you call the endpoint!

It is all now connected as we humans use it all for food.

dhw: Why do you describe a God who wants to create “novelties”, i.e. life forms which never existed before, and succeeds in doing so, as “clueless”?

DAVID: All types of experiments look for answers. All experimenters are clueless as to the answers until they are uncovered.

dhw: “Clueless” is a term of abuse meaning having no knowledge or understanding of something. I would suggest that a God who creates life and experiments with its biochemistry in order to create new forms, or to find a formula for a particular form, or to devise a mechanism that will enable his invention to do its own designing, must know a bit about his subject. And I would also suggest that his success in fulfilling any of these purposes offers a far more positive view of his talents than the messy, cumbersome and inefficient method and single purpose you impose on him.

DAVID: Your experimenting God has no definite endpoint. I'm afraid that is a clueless God to me. A true God is so superior He needs no experimentation.

dhw: You are no more qualified to describe a “true” God than I am. So far your “true God” has used a messy, cumbersome, inefficient method to achieve what you claim to have been his one and only purpose, and in doing so he has knowingly and therefore deliberately created all the causes of evil. If God is an eternal, conscious mind, and if we assume that he created life for a purpose, and if – as you have assured us – he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, why do you find it impossible to believe that he might have created life because he wanted to enjoy creating things that would interest him? Experimentation with or without a specific “endpoint” would be one way of doing this. How do you know he did not get what he wanted to get, and if he did, how does that make him "clueless"?

The obvious comparison: my God knew in advance exactly what He was getting, and your God found us a surprise!!!