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

by dhw, Saturday, March 02, 2024, 08:50 (264 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My purposes for God's actions are that He wished to produced humans and all the recourses they would need. He then evolved every organism on Earth. A very logical conclusion based on current populations of species.

dhw: You are simply repeating your theory that his one and only purpose was to produce us and current species, and so he proceeded to produce every species that ever lived, 99.9% of which had no connection with us and current species.

DAVID: Same illogical complaint. The 99.9% are all the ancestors of what lives on Earth now. How are they not connected?

Must we go over all this again? It was settled weeks ago. You had been conflating two statistics: 99.9 of our ancestors are dead, and 99.9% of all species were not our ancestors – which you confirmed as follows:

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

Our prime example was the dinosaurs: only one group of dinosaurs is believed to have been the ancestors of birds, whereas no other dinosaurs were the ancestors of any current species. Even in this post you confess:
DAVID: I don't know why God would produce so many species.

If they were all our past ancestors or our current food, you would know why he produced them.

Experimentation

dhw: So are you saying that God designed each species of dinosaur as an experiment? If not, in what way could the dinosaurs have “come from” a degree of “autonomous experimentation”.

DAVID: Still your total confusion about 99.9% as real ancestors of the living.

See above. I am now asking you what you meant when you said it was possible that twigs (referring to dinosaurs) may have come from some degree of autonomous experimentation. If dinosaurs did not do the experimenting, are you saying that your God was experimenting?

Purpose

dhw: Quite uniquely, disregarding any definition you will find in any dictionary, by “allegorical” you mean: is the description right or wrong?

DAVID: Dictionary: "a figurative or symbolic way of representing ideas or emotions." This is my use.

dhw: It’s NOT your use! The words “worship, recognize, relationship, enjoy, interest” are not figurative or symbolic. […]

DAVID: We are not discussing the worship of God, but the attempt to understand His personality, and as a non-person, a personage like no other person, what the words mean to us may not apply to God.

You suggested that your God might want us to recognize his work and worship him. The words are not “allegorical” - they do not symbolize anything, and we both know what they mean. The question is whether your suggestion is true or not. And if your suggestion is true, it contradicts your suggestion that he is selfless and has no self-interest.

DAVID: I had no idea how to think about God until I read Adler. You and I don't think alike now at all about God's possible personality, especially because He is not s personage.

I regard all your guesses concerning God’s desire to be worshipped etc. as perfectly feasible. It’s you who are attacking your own suggestions – having realized that they contradict your view of God as acting without self-interest.

DAVID: The theology I developed is based on Adler's instructions. I doubt Adler and I fully agree on a theology itself.
And:
DAVID: How I reached my theology is by using Adler's teachings. You have no idea what ideas he imparts

dhw: I can only discuss the theology you propose, regardless of who taught you what.
And:
I doubt very much that Adler taught you that “autonomous” means dependent on God’s instructions, “allegorical” means correct or incorrect, “wanting to be worshipped” means without self-interest, God is all good so long as we ignore the problem of evil, and God deliberately, messily, cumbersomely and inefficiently designed and culled 99.9 out of 100 species that had nothing to do with the only species he wanted to design. But even if he did impart those ideas to you, that does not make them any the less absurd.