Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, January 19, 2024, 13:40 (99 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw:[…] You insist that your God designed all species with the sole purpose of producing us plus food, and you have no idea why he would have specially designed the 99.9% which had no connection with us or our food. That remains the point at issue, which is so illogical that you can't think of a single reason why your all-powerful God would choose such an inefficient method. So maybe at least one of your theories is wrong.

DAVID: What lives today are the survivors of the culling process of evolution.

Obviously. But since you believe your God designed every species individually and was in control of evolution, he must have done the culling.

DAVID: We can assume every line/branch suffered the same rate of loss. What remains today is humans in charge of everything else.

None of this means that we and current species are the descendants of 99.9% of ALL past species. As you have agreed in the past, we are all the descendants of the 0.1% of past species whose lines continued into the present.

DAVID: Viewed that way we are left with why did God evolve us?

That is not the whole issue! We are left with the question why your God would deliberately have designed and then culled 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with what you say was his one and only purpose: us and our food. Stop dodging!

DAVID: We know He can simply create with no predecessors in the Cambrian. God gives us no hint as to His reasoning. Since God is all-knowing, He has chosen the best method. That reasoning evaporates your complaints.

We don’t “know” anything – even whether God exists – but we are now discussing your God’s motives and methods. Your THEORY (it is not knowledge) yet again is that he only wanted to design us plus food, could have done so directly, but instead proceeded NOT ONLY to “evolve” us (designing us in lots of different stages) but also to design and cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with us plus food. Of course “God gives us no hint of His reasoning”, which applies to all theories, but you can’t give us even a hint of your OWN reasoning for such an illogical theory! The combination makes no sense to YOU. But you cannot bear to acknowledge that this senselessness might indicate that one or both of your theories might be wrong.

dhw: You keep harping on about your purposeful God. So what do you think might have been his purpose for putting us in charge?

DAVID: He gave us the brains to do it and I presume at the end of evolution He wished to have someone in charge.

We don't know if it's the end, but why do you think he might have wished to have someone in charge? After all, life continued for 3.x billion years without us. It’s no use telling us how purposeful God is if you have no idea what his purpose was!

Theodicy (now "prejudice")

dhw: Unlike you, I have no fixed beliefs to which I cling, no matter how illogical they may be. Do you regard this as prejudice?

DAVID: No, you have a reasonable position, since you require proof. But why criticize beliefs based on faith?

dhw: I don’t. I said so quite explicitly: “I have no problem with faith so long as it doesn’t turn into prejudice.” The turning point comes when someone has a fixed belief which causes them to ignore any information that might cast doubt on that belief.

DAVID: Do you have such factual information?

I was generalizing. Nobody has factual information about your God’s existence, nature, motives or methods. In this context, however, you have fixed theories which make no sense to you, but you stick to them even when you are offered alternative theories which do make sense to you but which conflict with your preconceptions. That doesn’t mean you must believe any of the alternatives (they are varied anyway), but your embrace of illogical theories which make no sense to you, and your rejection of logical alternatives, indicates that your mind is now closed.