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

by David Turell , Wednesday, March 06, 2024, 16:46 (260 days ago) @ dhw

99.9% and 0.1%

DAVID: 99.9% culled produced today's 0.1% surviving, in lines we can trace which means the 99.9% are the direct ancestors of the survivors. Of course, the 'other 99.9% DID evolve into today's species'. Evolution is a constant gain in the number of exiting of species, not a reduction!***

dhw: This is becoming farcical.

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: This means we and our contemporary species are descended from the 0.1% of species that survived, and not from the 99.9% that did not survive. Example: dinosaurs. Only birds are descendants from one small group. No other contemporary species is descended from dinosaurs. Therefore the vast majority of dinosaurs were not the ancestors of contemporary species. Here is the same question again, and let’s see if you agree or disagree with yourself:

Do you believe that we and our food (= contemporary species) are directly descended from 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived?

Yes. All existing lines contributed to the 99.9% total loss.

(*** See Miscellaneous Part One under “Bad luck”)

Experimentation

DAVID: How much the twigs [dinosaur species] came from some degree of automatic [misprint for autonomous] experimentation I see as a possibility.” […]

dhw: So did dinosaur speciation occur through their autonomous ability to make experiments, or are you saying that God did the experimenting?

DAVID: A purposeful God does not need experimentation like your so-called God.

dhw: There’s no reason why a purposeful God should not experiment in order to achieve his purpose! Why do you think (a) experimenting in order to find the best way of implementing a purpose, or (b) experimenting in order to make new discoveries, is less god-like than messily, cumbersomely and inefficiently designing 99.9 out of 100 species that are irrelevant to the purpose?

An all-knowing omniscient God has no need to experiment!!!

DAVID: Some minor variations in Dinos forms could be adaptations not new species, remembering the human tendency to be splitters not lumpers. For example, some different Homo fossils may be variations, not separate species.

dhw: All agreed. But you talked of possible “autonomous experimentation”. Do you mean that the dinos were able to make changes to themselves to see if those changes would work?

Not to experiment, but adapt.

Purpose

DAVID: Not contradictions! I don't question my thoughts about God's possible desires, because I recognize God's selflessness overrides the issue, which means those are secondary to His creations. He is not us in any sense of personality.

dhw: You think he might want us to worship and recognize him, and he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, but he is selfless. This apparently is not a contradiction. And although he may have thought patterns and emotions like ours, this cannot mean that he might have thought patterns and emotions like ours. But this is not a contradiction.

You are still trying to humanize God. Put another way, nothing God does is self-service. You don't like the work allegorical to discuss these meanings of words for God, how about metaphorical?>

Adler

DAVID: Adler's book's subtitle applies to you: "A Guide for Twentieth Century Pagans". Why is he a true theologian? He was a recognized philosopher of religion. At no point did Adler offer any opinion about God's personal reasons for producing us.

dhw: And we all recognize Dawkins as a philosopher of atheism. So what? Does “recognition” mean omniscience? It’s clear that all your self-contradictory theories about God’s purpose, methods and nature have nothing whatsoever to do with Adler, so I don’t know why you keep hiding behind him.

I used his instructions to form my own theology. If I wanted to recognize God, I needed to know how to do it from a theologian's standpoint.