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

by dhw, Sunday, March 03, 2024, 11:42 (55 days ago) @ David Turell

99.9% and 0.1%

We settled this issue when for once you gave me a straight answer:

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.

dhw: 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.

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

DAVID: Still at different views. 0.1% survived and their ancestors makeup the 99.9% extinct. Our line produced us, and all other lines produced Earth's living resources for our use.

The ancestors of current species do NOT make up the 99.9% extinct. The vast majority of dinosaurs did not evolve into any current descendants. You have agreed that we and our food (= living resources) are descended from the 0.1% of survivors, and not from all the creatures that ever lived. Why do you keep contradicting yourself? Please stop it.

Experimentation

dhw: I am now asking you what you meant when you said it was possible that twigs (referring to species of 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?

DAVID: I still think God speciated all forms. Some dinosauric twigs were the result of in-species adaptation.

The twigs ARE the different species. You used the words “autonomous experimentation”. So did dinosaur speciation occur through their autonomous ability to make experiments, or are you saying that God did the experimenting?

Purpose

dhw: 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: You refuse to see in our realm our words are perfect in meaning for us. When those words enter God's realm, we don't know whether they work or not to fit God's personality.

Correct. Nothing to do with “allegory” but simply a question of whether your God does or doesn’t want us to worship him.

DAVID: God creates from His purposes without consideration aforehand of his personal reactions.

Spoken with your usual tone of authority. But if God DOES want us to worship him – as in one of your suggestions – it is absurd to say that he has no self-interest. Please stop these silly language games.

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 a personage.

dhw: 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: See above.

Yes, see above.

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:
dhw: 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.

DAVID: Your absurdist interpretation of my theology implying God should not have evolved us, ignores reality. God evolved us and He culled 99.9% dead for the 0.1% living to do it, arriving at an Earth dominated by humans using all the resources He provided for us on our privileged planet.

Another of your absurd digressions/distortions. I have never ever at any time on any occasion (do you like my tautologies?) implied that God should not have evolved us. I have objected to your theory that an all-powerful God would deliberately, messily, cumbersomely and inefficiently design and then have to cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with the one and only purpose you allow him to have, which is to create us and our food (which you now call our resources). Now please tell us if Adler taught you this and all the other wacky theories listed above.