Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, December 18, 2023, 15:42 (339 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: 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.

dhw: The mathematical description is the general consensus that 99.9% of life forms are extinct, and current life forms are the descendants of the 0.1% that led to us and our food. You are absolutely right. It has no other meaning. And the irrational interpretation we’re discussing is YOURS: namely, that your all-powerful, all-knowing God’s only purpose was to design us and our food, and therefore he designed and then had to cull 99.9 out of 100 species which had no connection with his one and only purpose. You can’t get much more irrational than that.

Our only difference is I recognize God's purpose to produce us by His choice method of evolution, and you offer God's who don't make choices or seem to not have any goals.

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?

DAVID: 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.

dhw: A God who designs and has to cull 99.9% species irrelevant to his purpose doesn’t sounds like one who knows how to get what he wants. That’s why you call his method messy, cumbersome and inefficient. None of my alternatives are any more human than your version, none are directionless, and only the first has him not knowing how to get what he wants, but I find targeted experimentation rather more efficient than deliberately designing and having to kill off 99.9 mistakes.

A God who could create a universe and then start life, is not then going to use the inefficient form of creating by experimentation, a method that must look for answers.

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

dhw: Correct. And some theories are more reasonable than others. Yours makes no sense even to you! All of mine fit in logically with the history of life. You even believe we and our foods are descended from Cambrian species that had no precursors, thus hammering home your belief that he wasted his time designing all the life forms that preceded the Cambrian.

Easily explained: pre-Cambrian forms developed the necessary biochemistry for Cambrian forms.

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. 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. […]

DAVID: God designed the huge bush of life for our use.

dhw: That is no answer to the above! And 99.9% of history’s huge bush is extinct and was NOT designed for our use. Hence the question why he bothered to design it if he only wanted to design OUR bush.

Foolish response. The 0.1% that survived is the issue. Everything on Earth is for our use.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Stop dodging. I complain that you are imposing a purpose and method on your God that make him look like a bumbling idiot (though you confine yourself to terms like messy, cumbersome and inefficient.)

Stop attacking my God. I like Him just as He is. What you view is a myopic contortion of my theology.