Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, January 13, 2024, 08:33 (105 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: What driving emotional force made God create, if there was one? That is our discussion. My answer for your might-be's is no force. God simply creates with no motives. He has secondary responses.

dhw: Your once all-purposeful God is now a purposeless zombie. If God had no motive for creating life, why did he bother? And if he had no motive, how could his motive have been to design us and our food? And you still haven’t told us why your earlier might-be purposes (to be worshipped, recognized, have a relationship with us) are less “needy” and less “human” than the purpose of enjoyment and interest?

DAVID: More evidence God must be like humans, in your mind.

dhw: Not “like” humans (how many humans can design universes or create life from scratch?) but with certain thought patterns and emotions in common with his, just as you yourself have indicated in the past. The above list of might-be’s was yours, as was your certainty that he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, but as usual you have dodged every single question I have asked above.

DAVID: Not a dodge. I won't be drawn into a discussion of a human-like God. We can guess at God's motives as I have and they remain guesses, while not considering any of them as self-serving.

In the first post above,, you categorically stated: “God simply creates with no motives”, although you continually tell us he is all-purposeful, and for 15 years you have insisted that his motive for creating life was to design us and our food. In previous posts you have stated your certainty that he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, and that he probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours. Now would you please answer the bolded questions above.

99.9& versus 0.1%

We can now end this discussion, thanks to a fossil skin 290 million years old! Previously you have claimed that “The 99.9% of evolution produced the 0.1% extant” This clearly means that 99.9% of all species produced us. Your closed triangle image was meant to reinforce this - the “area” being the 99.9% of all species – as opposed to the bush, which diverges into countless branches that never meet. But now, praise be, we have a revelation:

dhw: Perhaps worth pointing out that the different groups diverged and developed. They did not all link up with one another in a straight line from themselves to us and our food. 99.9% of them were not our ancestors.

DAVID: Our direct human line had a loss of ancestors at the 99.9% level, per Raup.

Yes! Of course the loss of 99.9% of our direct human line(= our ancestors) fits the history. And so we can now dismiss all the nonsense about the 99.9% of evolution producing us, and accept that only 0.1% of past species led to us (plus food). And we remain stuck with 99.9% of past species which you believe your God deliberately designed and culled, and which had no connection with us or our food but came to a dead end. Agreed at last?

The immune system

DAVID: […] you still don't understand the ID view of speciation by a designing mind.

dhw: […] you still don’t understand that design by intelligent cells (perhaps themselves designed by your God) is also intelligent design, though not by a single mind.

DAVID: Totally rejected. Design requires consciousness. Are your cell committees' conscious?

dhw: There are different degrees of consciousness. [I gave your dog and bacteria as examples.] […]. Of course that is not human consciousness, but without being conscious of those conditions, how could they possibly respond to them? […] We have no idea of the precise degree of their consciousness (which is why Shapiro's theory is still theory, not fact), but my answer to your question is a resounding yes.

DAVID: And my answer is cells are fully automatic automatons.

You asked if cells were conscious, and I gave you examples, plus Shapiro’s criteria for consciousness, plus the vital point that there are different degrees. You simply ignore the whole of my response, and repeat your fixed opinion. I’ll try to get an answer out of you: do you believe that the cell communities of which all multicellular organisms consist can respond to the demands of their environment without being conscious of their environment? Yes or no, please.

Theodicy
DAVID: Godel is a famous thinker in logic. Note his incompleteness theorem. His opinions are worth something to those with open minds.

dhw: I can only comment on what you tell us, and even you could not accept the so-called logic of his theory that our failure to fulfil our potential in this life means there MUST be an afterlife in which we can do so. And do you really want to re-open the discussion on theodicy, just because Godel says God is perfect?

DAVID: No, let's not. But God is perfect.

You just won’t let it rest, will you? Since your God is all powerful, then of course he sets the criteria for perfection. If he decides to design murderous viruses, or to chuck an asteroid at you and me, he can still call himself perfect. And you and Godel can pretend you know all about God’s attributes, while at the same time you tell us at the start of this thread that it’s all guesses, so how the heck do you “KNOW” he is whatever you want him to be?
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