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

by David Turell , Friday, November 17, 2023, 15:56 (162 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: It is you (Raup) who have set the figure of 99.9% of past species that have been “discarded” (gone extinct), and 0.1% is what is left! But that does not mean we and our food are directly descended from every single one of those 99.9%! You have previously agreed that we and our food are directly descended from the 0.1%. Your own example 1 of self-contradiction is as follows:

dhw[referring to the Cambrian]: So how can you claim that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of species that ever lived if we and our fellow mammals are descended from species that arrived 540 million years ago without any precursors?

DAVID: we both recognize the gaps in evolution.

Yes. So please answer the question and stop dodging. Example 2:

dhw: Can you trace a direct line from, say, cats and dogs and crocodiles and lizards to all the life forms that existed during the 3000,000,000 years before the Cambrian (most of which are probably unknown to us anyway)? Even dinosaurs have disappeared without any connections with the present apart from birds.

DAVID: So you have forgotten the famous illustration of Darwin's diagram of evolution. Everything connected to the origin.

dhw: I keep reminding you that you call it the bush of life (Darwin called it the tree), and 99.9% (your figure) of the branches of the bush/tree did NOT lead to us or our food. Hence your acknowledged inability to find any reason why your God would have designed and discarded them in the first place. Please respond to the examples, and stop dodging!

What exists today is the human population and everything else, the 0.1 % surviving from evolution. 99.9% are gone forever and can be forgotten in this discussion. Humans are now making meat from vegetable matter. Everything on Earth is here to be used by us. That is what is meant by humans and their food. We consume all sorts of things: coal, oil, lumber, wool, etc. The point is made.

DAVID: You have repeated your foolish complaint about God using evolution. Evolution is a fact. God is a belief. You cannot complain about the results of evolution…..

dhw: I have never complained about your God using evolution or about the results of evolution, and I agree that evolution is a fact and God is a belief. My complaint is about your theory that your all-powerful God’s only purpose was us and therefore he specially designed and had to cull 99.9 species out of 100 that had no connection with us.

DAVID: Same baseless complaint about God and His evolution.

dhw: Same dodge. A complaint about an illogical theory about God and evolution is a complaint about the theory, not about God, unless you now think of yourself as God.

I believe God did it. Not theory to me.