Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, December 17, 2023, 16:10 (132 days ago) @ dhw

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

dhw: 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.

The constant bold is simply a mathematical description of the actual loss of forms in evolution, a process which produced us. It has no other meaning with the exception of your irrational interpretation, which is easily seen as a complaint about God's method.

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.

dhw: 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?

Number 3 is your usual attempt to tell us about a humanized directionless form of a God who doesn't know how to evolve what He thinks He might wish to evolve.

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

dhw: 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?

No one can know His reasons, can you? All we can do is theorize from what He created.

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.

dhw: 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.

God designed the huge bush of life for our use. Assuming God in charge, that is obvious. So, stop complaining about a necessary 99.9% loss from the process. It is simply a complaint God used the wrong method.