Return to David's theory of evolution and purpose (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, February 17, 2024, 17:43 (278 days ago) @ dhw

99.9% and 0.1%

DAVID: No lines were ever sacrificed., which is your premise. What God destroyed were twigs/branches of lines He trimmed away.

dhw: It’s you who say that ALL the lines were deliberately designed and culled (now "sacrificed"), including the millions of “twigs/branches” that did NOT grow into the only ones he wanted to design. Stop dodging!

DAVID: When one trims a bush, He creates specific branches reaching to the desired tips.

dhw: This is getting silly. In your theory, he creates specific branches reaching to the desired tips, but he also creates millions of branches that don’t reach the required tips, so he cuts them off. Why does he create them in the first place? You have no idea. We must ask God to explain the messy, inefficient method you impose on him.

God chose to use this system. No further explanation is needed.

DAVID: How much the twigs came from some degree of automatic experimentation I see as a possibility.

dhw: This is a welcome concession, except that I have no idea what you mean by “automatic” experimentation. Assuming your God exists, either he would have deliberately experimented with each design, or he would have designed organisms to do their own experimenting. There’s hope yet! Do you now accept both these theories as possible?

DAVID: I can see some degree of automaticity in speciation may have created unwanted twigs.

dhw: Please explain what you mean by “automaticity” here? Do you mean that species were given the power to design themselves? Who or what would be conducting the experimentation?

The issue is how much speciation ability organisms had in the past, if any or not. Following your line of thought re brilliant cell committees, that raises the possibility of an organism creating new species for God to judge. Small steps are a possibility.

Purpose

dhw: If your God exists, I have absolutely no doubt that he would have had a purpose in designing life. I’m not questioning your honesty, but I am questioning why you ridicule him by limiting him to one purpose and making out that bbbhe devoted himself to messily and inefficiently designing species that had no connection with his purpose. bbbAnd I question your assumptions about his nature, which frequently contradict your own views of his nature, e.g. he wants us to worship him, but he has no self-interest.

DAVID: First, my God did not produce us so we would worship Him. That worship might happen was quite a secondary thought.

dhw: How do you know? If you think he wants us to worship him, why do you think it couldn’t have been a prime purpose for his designing us?

DAVID: As above, a secondary event since we have free will to worship or not?

If he wants us to worship him, he would hardly get any satisfaction if he programmed us to worship him! Why is wanting to be worshipped a “secondary” event?

DAVID: Yes, I limit the possibilities; we are here running the Earth. That is the true endpoint.

dhw: “Endpoint” does not have to mean one and only purpose! We can worship him and still run the Earth. What would have been his purpose anyway, to have us running the Earth?

DAVID: That is what we are doing, running the Earth. As an endpoint, that was His plan.

dhw: Please answer my question. Why do you think he wanted us to run the Earth? And why should such a plan exclude the possibility that above all else, he might want us to worship him, and to recognize his wonderful work, and even to have a relationship with him?

He created very sentient organisms to do the job. That He wish the relationships you propose is possible. The main purpose was to create us, nothing further.