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

by dhw, Monday, November 13, 2023, 11:22 (166 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: In view of your recent vacillations and obfuscations, please give me a straight answer: do you believe that 99.9% of extinct species were the direct ancestors of us and our food, or that we humans and our food are directly descended from 0.1% of extinct species?

DAVID: Humans and our food are the remaining 0.1% survivors. The 99.9% are ancestors. […]

dhw: I specifically used the term “direct ancestors of us and our food”. Bolded above, you don’t know why he designed 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with us and our food (as you have agreed throughout all the years of this discussion), and a minute later you claim they were all direct ancestors of us and our food! And we shouldn't forget that according to you, the majority of our direct ancestors and those of other animals now in existence were designed by your God without any precursors during the Cambrian period, which leaves us with pre-Cambrian life forms stretching back around 3000,000,000 years. Please stop shooting yourself in the foot.

DAVID: You keep ignoring my major point that everything on Earth exists to be eaten by us or used by us. Therefore, everything that was evolved was purposefully created by God as He evolved every organism ever living. Everything is connected to us!!!

You keep ignoring every self-contradiction listed above, and it’s becoming painful. The fact that we late-coming humans can use everything on Earth does not explain why your God would have specially designed and had to cull 99.9 out of 100 species over 3.X thousand million years before we arrived. And the fact that we can use everything on Earth does not mean that 99.9 organisms out of 100 species that ever lived on Earth were the direct ancestors of us and of those species which we now eat. And “everything is connected to us!!!” has nothing to do with direct ancestry, and is only true because everything is connected to everything else on Planet Earth because everything on Planet Earth depends on Planet Earth for its existence. Will you never stop dodging?

DAVID: I'm happy because I don't need God's reasoning and I'm grateful for God's gifts to us.

dhw: Your happiness and gratitude do not contribute one iota of reason to your theories. You could be just as happy and grateful without them.

DAVID: It depends how one views eh qualities of living.

I hope your happiness and gratitude don’t depend on your illogical and self-contradictory theories about your God’s nature, purposes and methods.

dhw: Your inability to answer the fundamental question of theodicy after considering all the known facts, as well as your willingness to live with your ignorance, mirrors that of the agnostic’s approach to the fundamental question of God’s existence.

DAVID: The agnostic lives with ignorance?

Of course. Just as you live with your inability to answer all the fundamental questions I keep asking you – theodicy being just one of them. (You are happy and grateful although you are ignorant of “God’s reasoning” to explain your own self-contradictory theories.)