Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, January 27, 2024, 08:32 (91 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I’m going to try to bring some order into this discussion, which has degenerated almost into farce.

DAVID: The farce is your making. Evolution had to cull 99.9% to reach today's surviving 0.1%. From a species standpoint humans are tiny part of the millions of species on Earth.

A farcical opening to start us off. Evolution is a process! If, as you believe, your God controlled evolution and designed every species, then evolution didn’t design and cull anything – your first-cause God did! So what forced him to design and cull 99.9% of species that had no connection with his one and only purpose (more of which later). And of course we are a tiny part. Who said we weren’t?

(I went on to list four points, but will only repeat those you have commented on, since your comments ignore the other points.)

3) David has agreed on numerous occasions that he has no idea why his God would have designed 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with his goal. (I can provide quotes.) He now agrees with Tony, however, that designing us and our food would only have been part of his God’s purpose or plan.

DAVID: Here your farce continues. God designed millions of species that are not us. The 0.1%, of which we are a part, are the survivors of the culling process.

Correct (if we accept God as the designer). That does not mean that 99.9 out of 100 extinct species were our ancestors (as you were claiming a few days ago), and it does not explain why your God would have designed 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with what, until two days ago, you believed was his one and only purpose.

DAVID: You have morphed a statistical analysis of extinction into a weird description of evolution. Your continued complaint (You don't like that term but that is what it is) is God shouldn't have evolved us. I needn't repeat I don't know why He chose evolution as His method of creating the present case on Earth.

This is another of your silly dodges. If your God exists, I have no complaint whatsoever about his choosing evolution. My complaint (as you know perfectly well)) is about your theory that in order to evolve (design) us and our contemporary species, you have him designing 99.9 out of 100 species that have no connection with us and our contemporary species. STOP DODGING!

dhw: a) Do we now agree that we and our contemporary species are not directly descended from 99.9% of all the organisms that ever lived, but are descended from only 0.1% of the organisms that ever lived? (We are accepting the current estimates, but they are not set in stone.)

DAVID: Finally, a true point.

Yes, finally! So let’s hear no more nonsense about 99.9% being our ancestors. Having got rid of that absurd dodge, we go back to the same bolded complaint, as follows:

dhw: b) We cannot think of a single reason why God should create and cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with the purpose David imposes on him in 1).
c) It therefore makes sense to consider a different purpose for the creation of the 99.9%.

You replied that the other part of his purpose was “planning our future”.

dhw: d) Re other purposes or parts of the plan, planning the future of a species which is supposed to have free will does not provide a purpose for the 99.9 extinct species that had no connection with us and our food.

DAVID: Again, complaining God evolved us and everything else. Tony and I make the same point, what is here is meant for our use.

You cannot explain why your God would have designed 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with what you consider to be his purpose, you agree with Tony that we could not have been his sole purpose, but you still can’t or won’t come up with any other purpose, and somehow you twist this into a totally baseless proposal that I complain about God using evolution. All my alternative explanations for the vast diversity of extinct species entail God using evolution. How can they be a complaint about God using evolution?