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

by dhw, Thursday, March 07, 2024, 08:22 (259 days ago) @ David Turell

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?

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

You are incorrigible! That is not an answer to the question. We agree that 99.9% of the ancestors of existing lines are extinct and are part of the 99.9% of all extinct species, but you have also agreed that existing species are NOT descended from all the species that ever lived – they are only descended from the 0.1% of survivors. Even you cannot pretend that your initial "no" actually means "yes". STOP DODGING! It is the lines that did NOT evolve into us and our contemporaries that render your anthropocentric theory of evolution so absurdly illogical that even you condemn it as messy, cumbersome and inefficient.

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?

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

Obviously. So in order to understand why he would design and cull 99.9 irrelevant species, we should consider the possibility that we plus our food were NOT his one and only purpose, or that he is not omniscient but is a God who likes to try out new ideas, make discoveries, or even give his creations the freedom to do their own inventing (as indeed you believe he has done with humans).

DAVID: Some minor variations in Dinos forms could be adaptations not new species, [,,,] For example, some 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?

DAVID: Not to experiment, but adapt.

So do please explain at last what sort of “autonomous experimentation” you meant!

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.

DAVID: 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?

I accept your perfectly feasible proposal that your God may have thought patterns and emotions like ours. But a God who wants to be worshipped can hardly be called selfless or not self-serving. The words worship, recognize, relationship, enjoy and interest are not metaphors or allegories. They do not symbolize anything, and you have agreed that the question is whether your God does or doesn’t – not whether he disagrees with the dictionary definitions.

Adler

DAVID: 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.

And apparently his instructions have led you to a raft of illogical conclusions and self-contradictions. Thank you for agreeing that these are your own theology and not his. So we can now leave him out of all our discussions on your theories, except for the theory that God exists.