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

by dhw, Monday, March 04, 2024, 09:00 (54 days ago) @ David Turell

99.9% and 0.1%

DAVID: 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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: The contradiction is yours. The 0.1% ARE the survivors living today.

Yes.

DAVID: Their ancestors are the 99.9% now extinct. Your dinosaur example proves the point: birds 0.1% from all those dinos.

You agreed categorically that we and our food descended from the 0.1% of survivors and not from all the creatures that ever lived. The ancestors of birds were a single tiny group of dinosaurs, not “all those dinos”! The other 99.9% (or whatever the figure) did NOT evolve into any current species. Stop contradicting yourself!

Experimentation

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

dhw: 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?

DAVID: I'm stuck with God designs species. Is some of it experimentation? Your God needs it, not mine.

This is becoming a habit: you make a comment, I ask a question, and you proceed either to contradict what you said or to ignore it. YOU said it was possible that the twigs (dinosaurs) came from some degree of autonomous experimentation, and now, when I ask what you meant, you try to turn YOUR idea against me!

Purpose

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.

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

DAVID: We don't know for a fact.

Of course we don’t. It’s all theory, including God’s existence. Nothing to do with “allegory”. I have no objection to your suggestion that God might want us to worship him. But your suggestion contradicts your other suggestion, which is that he has no self-interest. No facts involved – just two suggestions of yours that contradict each other.

DAVID: How do you know His desires for Himself? My tone of authority comes from my view of Him. You, on the other hand, have many soft views of a nebulous form of God.

As above, neither of us knows. It’s all suggestions. I find all of your suggestions – desire to be recognized and worshipped, have a relationship with us, enjoyment of creating, interest in his creations – perfectly feasible, and it is you who are questioning them because they conflict with another of your suggestions, which is that your God is selfless and has no self-interest. It’s not my fault if you tie yourself in knots with your self-contradictions.

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: Why don't you realize your entire complaint says God should not have evolved us.

Because that is not my complaint, and you are clutching at straws in order to dodge the sheer absurdity of the theories listed above. I have offered three possible theistic explanations for the course of evolution, none of which even remotely hint that God should not have evolved us and every other species: two entail experimentation, and the third entails a free-for-all.

DAVID: Repeat: Adler's book has one purpose: "How to Think About God". Interpretation to teach you the real truth about Adler. He teaches the reader to think about God's personality as a true theologian.

How do you define a “true” theologian? Thank you for indirectly admitting that Adler did not teach you any of the illogical theories you have come up with. I hope he taught you the truth which you have admitted – that all speculation about God’s nature etc. is just that: speculation, guesswork, theory, and not fact. And that anyone who expresses his personal views “with a tone of authority” is kidding himself.