Return to David's theory of evolution, purpose & theodicy (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, March 13, 2024, 11:24 (45 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I follow theistic thinking as presented by several sources. I have never found the sort of God you describe in any of it.

dhw: Process theology rejects the theory of divine omnipotence and omniscience, and since God doesn’t know the future, he must be capable of learning and is not immutable. Deists propose that your God initiated creation and then allowed it to run its own course (free-for-all). Many theologians, including the Pope, accept Darwin’s theory of evolution, but please tell me which theologians preach that an omnipotent, omniscient God deliberately, messily, cumbersomely, inefficiently and incomprehensibly designed and culled 99.9 irrelevant species out of 100 in order to fulfil his sole purpose of designing us and our contemporary species.

DAVID: Process and deist theologies are not mainstream, and not worth using. My view of God is mine and just as valid as any other.

You have never found the sort of God I describe in any theology. I have enlightened you. And your absurd theory of evolution – painting your God as a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer – is not mainstream but it’s yours, and so you argue that even if a theory is not mainstream, that doesn’t mean it’s “not worth using”, and one view “is just as valid as any other”. Stop shooting yourself in the foot.

DAVID: The culling described by Raup is not the way it should be stated in your distorted way: Raup says 99.9% of all organisms died to produce today's 0.1% survivors. Never a word about species, which you have purposely added to create a view of God as an experimenting, humanized unrecognizable form of a God.

dhw: It’s not the 99.9% of extinct organisms that produced today’s 0.1% survivors. You have agreed that we and our food were produced by the 0.1% of organisms that survived all the extinctions. I’m not arguing with Raup. I’m trying to find an explanation for YOUR illogical theory bolded above. Experimentation or a free-for-all would explain the 99.9%.

DAVID: Experimentation and free-for-all concepts fit process and deist views which you seem to follow in your catch-all views of any sorts of Gods are possible. Mine is a purposeful God, who culled 99.9% of forms to reach now.

Nobody knows the correct view of God. Yours is a purposeful God who used a messy, cumbersome, inefficient, inexplicable and illogical way to achieve the goal you impose on him. My alternatives suggest a purposeful God who achieved his purpose by one of two possible forms of experimentation and/or the invention of a free-for-all. These views of God are ”just as valid as any other” and, unlike your own, have the great advantage of making sense.

Experimentation

dhw: I'm asking YOU what YOU meant by “autonomous experimentation”, because YOU thought it was a possibility. You refuse to answer.

DAVID: As for 'autonomous', do you consider yourself autonomous?

dhw: You have tried to reverse the meaning of autonomous, refuse to explain what you were referring to, and now ask a totally irrelevant question, which would lead to a discussion on free will. I remain neutral on the subject, which we have discussed ad nauseam. Please stop dodging.

DAVID: Nonsense! Do you act everyday as if you have free will is a simple question. You can't tell me you don't act autonomously every day. Eash AM do your past influences dictate how you dress?

You are desperately changing the subject from your nonsensical use of the word “autonomous”, and your recognition of “experimentation” as a possibility, to a debate on free will. We concluded this debate long ago: if it means freedom from the chain of cause and effect, we do not have it; if it means freedom from influences outside ourselves, we have it (since prior causes and effects are still part of “us” and nobody else). Will you now please explain the nature of your “autonomous experimentation”, or do you wish to retract that “possibility”?

Theodicy: skeptical theist view of God

DAVID: Logically there must be a first cause. Undeniable. Living biochemistry requires a designing mind. At this point you and I part company.

dhw: No we don’t. I accept the logic of the design argument. But this is balanced by the illogicality of an unknown, immaterial, conscious mind simply being there for ever without having any source. […]

DAVID: So, we are left with existing here without a first cause. […]

dhw: We are not left here without a first cause! The choice lies between a mysterious, unknowable, supremely conscious mind without a source and an infinite mass of energy and matter which in the course of eternity eventually chanced to produce (David’s bold) a rudimentary form of life and consciousness that evolved into us and every other species I find both equally difficult to believe, because each produces what you call a chasm, and you must abandon all reason if you choose to leap over it (dhw's bold)
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DAVID: The bold tells me you favor chance. The mind (God)' chanced' says so.

You have misread it, but perhaps I should have made it clearer that the difference is between a conscious mind and non-conscious matter etc.So the choice is between 1) a conscious mind and 2) a mass of non-conscious energy and matter which chanced etc.…..And I find both equally difficult to believe.