Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 23, 2024, 10:54 (95 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: 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: Your question is a distortion of evolutionary math. To end with 0.1%, 99.9% died. Evolution happened, and my belief is God did it.
Later:
DAVID: My theory is based on analyzing God's works assuming God evolved us as His method of creation.

Yes, evolution happened, and if God exists, he used it as his method of creation. But you simply keep omitting your theory that he did it for the sole purpose of designing us plus our food and yet, according to you, he deliberately designed and then culled 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with us and our food. What is the “distortion”? Is that your belief or not? Please answer.

DAVID: What is silly is your constant distortion of the meaning of evolving. Most have to die!!! God chose to evolve us and provide the Earth with a vast diversity of forms.

Evolution does not mean that species have to die!!! Evolution means that every species is descended from earlier species. We accept the fact that 99.9% died. But it is not a fact that your God designed them all, or that he designed them for the sole purpose of creating us plus food, or that he had to obey some self-inflicted rule that he must create and cull 99.9 in order to produce 0.1. Stop dodging! However, if he chose to provide the Earth with a vast diversity of forms, extinct and extant, we can joyfully discard your totally illogical combination of theories. Diversity unconnected with us and our food becomes an end in itself, which fits in beautifully with his enjoyment of creation and his interest in his creations. Gone is the single purpose (us plus food) which makes such utter nonsense of your previous theories. This looks promising.

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.

dhw: 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: All evil is secondhand to His good works. Same old answer.

No point in going over the same old non-answers. I have quoted your theodicy theory and your self-contradictory theories of evolution as examples of your preconceptions.

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.

dhw: I've pin-pointed your preconceptions re evolution and theodicy. Now please open my eyes to pin-point my prejudices.

DAVID: Your concocted criticism of the method of creation that resulted in 99.9% loss. It was a success: 0.1% here to populate the Earth.

“Concocted”? YOUR theory is/was that your God’s method of achieving his one and only purpose was to design 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with his purpose – a method which you called messy and inefficient, and for which you can find no rational explanation. How does this indicate prejudice on my part?