Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, January 22, 2024, 12:49 (96 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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: The only answer I have to your question is God gave us the brains to be in charge, once evolution stopped.

That does not answer the question why, if his one and only aim was to produce us plus food, he specially designed and then discarded 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with his one and only aim. Stop dodging!

DAVID: I would assume He is sitting back to watch, not gone as deists would propose.

That does not answer the question why, if his one and only aim etc. etc.

DAVID: Your three views of why God evolved us are obvious humanizing views. A perfect God does not need those intentions.

You asked me for possible reasons why your God might have evolved us. I repeated my three alternatives, and asked you not to repeat your usual dodge of “humanization”, but of course you have done so. No point in repeating all your own humanizations as you will continue to ignore them.

DAVID: The 99.9% objection is to simply ignore it is statistical fact evolution produces such a result. Your view is God should not have evolved us.

This is the silliest of all your arguments. It is you who try desperately to avoid the fact that the 99.9% had no connection with the purpose you impose on your God, because you cannot find a single reason why he would have designed them! If God exists, of course he used evolution to produce us and every other species. That does not answer the bolded question!

Theodicy (now "prejudice").

dhw: 4. The preconceptions I was referring to, and which as usual you try to gloss over, concern your combined, self-contradictory theories of evolution (purpose us, method 99.9% not us), and your insistence that you know all about God’s nature, as well as his purpose and method, although the history of life simply doesn’t fit in with your preconceptions (the problem of theodicy).

DAVID: I've given you the standard answers for theodicy, which is to look at the ratios of good versus bad.

A non-answer. Evil exists. We not ignore murder and rape just because the majority of people don’t commit murder or rape. Your first-cause, all-knowing God must have known he was creating evil. How does that come to mean that he is all-good?

DAVID: Your view of Shapiro's theory is totally overblown in an attempt to show how to get rid of God.

Another deliberate distortion when you know perfectly well that I accept the possibility that your God may have designed Shapiro’s intelligent cells. I am an agnostic, not an atheist. But you simply cannot bear the thought that your nonsensical combined theories of evolution, which turn your God into a “messy” and “inefficient” designer (your terms), might be wrong.

Bacterial spears (transferred from "More Miscellany, as it deals with "prejudice")

dhw: I offer an alternative to your rigid insistence that God controls everything.[...] I don’t even know if God exists, so I’m not sure why you think my thinking is rigid. I try to consider all possible explanations for why and how life has evolved.

DAVID: You do not see your own prejudices.

I've pin-pointed your preconceptions above, at the start of this section. Now please open my eyes to pin-point my prejudices.