Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, December 17, 2023, 11:47 (132 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Back to your favorite form of a humanized God. God ended up with 0.1% designed and here now, not 99.9%!

dhw: That is the whole point! Only 0.1% of past life forms evolved into the life forms that are here now. 99.9%, according to you, were designed by your God and had to be culled by your God because they had no connection with his one and only purpose! And you don’t know why he would have designed them in the first place, as that would have been a messy, cumbersome, inefficient way of fulfilling the goal you impose on him.

DAVID: I have no way of knowing why God evolved us! Your complaint is He should have done it more efficiently.

There is no end to your dodging. The question is not why he evolved us. The problem is the bolded theory above! And it’s you who ridicule your own theory by saying how messy, cumbersome and inefficient your God must be, and you have no idea why he “evolved” us in this manner.

DAVID: My theory makes perfect sense to me. We are here, the most unusual result imaginable. Evolution is over. It is illogical to claim we were not God's goal.

1) No one on Earth would deny that we’re here. Yes, our advanced intelligence is extraordinary, but this doesn’t explain the illogicality of your bolded theory.
2) I have no idea what life will be like, say, a million years from now.
3) If God is all-purposeful and all-powerful, then it is logical to assume he would only design what he wished to design. So back we go to the bolded theory. You can’t think of a single reason. So either we and our food were not his one and only goal, or he was experimenting to find the right formula, or he hit on the concept of humans late on in the process, or he didn’t design every species but deliberately created a free-for-all – though leaving himself the option to dabble if he felt like it. Can you think of any other explanations?

DAVID: The difference is I see a powerful God who knows exactly what He wishes and creates it.

dhw: Strangely enough, I see the same. And my vision is no more human than yours.

DAVID: Your God is not strongly purposeful.

I have no idea what you mean by “strongly”. Your own belief that he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations offers as strong a purpose as one could wish for. I asked you about purposes under “Extremophiles”:

DAVID: We control the whole shebang. That is what God wanted, because that is what evolved.

dhw: Yes, we control most of the shebang (but there are natural disasters we certainly don’t control). So please tell us your God’s purpose for the extremophiles, the irrelevant 99.9%, and your God’s sole wish to design us so that we could control the shebang. If he wanted to control it before we came along, why did he want to give up control?

DAVID: A mental gift He gave us. He has His reasons.

You go on and on about your strongly purposeful God, and when I ask you what his purpose might have been, you reply “he has his reasons”. How do you know he is your “strongly” purposeful and not my alternative “strongly” purposeful(s) if you don’t know the reasons for his actions?

DAVID: Mathematically, 0.1% is every living form on Earth now. Death of 99.9% of all predecessors produced the 0.1% living today.

dhw: How can dead ends produce anything? […]

DAVID: The 'dead ends' are culled branches from the direct lines that led to all on Earth now. If it were all 'dead ends', nothing would be alive today. […]

dhw: More obfuscation. The branches were not ALL dead ends. 0.1% of them led to us and our food. It’s only you who make nonsense of the figures by insisting that we and our food (or perhaps just most of our food) are directly descended from Cambrian life forms that were designed “de novo”, i.e. had no precursors. In which case, it was 100% of pre-Cambrian life that had no connection with us plus our food. Plus all the post-Cambrians, such as non-avian dinosaurs.

DAVID: The pre-Cambrian set up a biochemical form of life which was used in the Cambrian forms. Full connection biochemically.

dhw: Biochemistry is common to all forms of life, but according to you, the forms of life that existed pre-Cambrian were not the forms from which we are descended. Stop dodging.

DAVID: Forms and biochemistry are two ways to study evolution. Biochemistry evolved from the start allowing more complex forms.

Correct. Species are different forms of life, and according to you, our species were designed “de novo”, i.e. they were not descended from any earlier form of life, i.e. all previous forms of life were irrelevant to the designing of ourselves. And you have no idea why he would have designed them. Maybe he didn’t. Or maybe...See my other alternatives, and stop dodging.