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

by dhw, Thursday, April 04, 2024, 11:45 (25 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: None of that explains why, if your God’s only purpose was us and our food, he specially, individually designed and then culled a vast number (maybe 99.9%) of species that had no connection with his purpose. That is why you call him a messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer, and that is the theory at issue, which you constantly leave out of your responses.

DAVID: I constantly answer to complain about your statistical distortion of evolution which provided humans and Earth's living resources for human use.

There is no “statistical distortion”. You have explicitly agreed that humans and our food (other species) are descended from 0.1% of all the creatures that ever lived and not from the remaining 99.9%. (I don’t mind if we question the exact figure - hence my “maybe” above). And you continue to dodge the illogicality of the theory bolded above.

Neutrality

DAVID: I had no idea how to think about God until I read both Adler and Anderson. A neutral start with conclusions from there. Do you ever conclude anything?

dhw: I get it. You were neutral until you read two books, and from then on you formed the image of the God you wished to believe in, and all your conclusions since then have been based on what they taught you to wish for. […]

DAVID: Yes, neutral at first not now.

dhw: You make your God what you wish to make him.

DAVID: Of course we do.

So you wish for and therefore believe in a God whose only purpose was to create you and your food by using a method you regard as inefficient, who is all-good but created or allowed evil for a morally good reason you can’t think of, who is selfless although he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations…But rather strangely, you don’t know if he loves us or not. I’d have thought you would want him to love us. Do you think he might NOT love us? Might he actually be indifferent to us? (Perilously close to deism – though you reject that because it’s not mainstream.) And why do you frown on atheists who might perhaps want an impersonal universe without a God? If it’s OK for you to make God what you want him to be, why shouldn’t atheists make the universe what they want it to be? Double standards. (The importance of this is the need for tolerance of other people’s beliefs. By all means let us discuss the pros and cons, but rigid preconceptions and personal wishes - as opposed to rational discussion - constitute prejudice, which as we all know can easily lead to the evil you want us to ignore.)

Darwinism and God
dhw: The issue is not support for design but your ridiculous claim that the theory of evolution is incompatible with belief in a designer God. It’s not. Stop dodging.

DAVID: ID's position is Darwinism is completely wrong and only design is correct. I represent ID.

dhw: Congratulations on your appointment. (I hope they don’t all know about your own theory of God’s messy, cumbersome, inefficient design.) And I’m sorry, but there are lots of people who would vehemently disagree that Darwinism is COMPLETELY wrong. Even your fellow ID-ers remain open-minded on the all-important theory of common descent:

Does intelligent design oppose common descent?
Uncommon Descent (not very appropriate here!)
https://uncommondescent.com › evolution › does-intellig...

"I first need to make clear that living things can be the product both of intelligent design and of common descent. If the designer chose to guide the process of gradual change from species to species, that would be both common descent and intelligent design. In other words, intelligent design theory does not require that common descent is false. Neither does intelligent design require that common descent is true...."

DAVID: Of course, ID recognizes the appearance of common descent, a designer might use it for efficiency. But the article tells us more:

For some reason you displaced my next entry:
dhw: They reject random mutations, and so do I. But if "intelligence" = God, clearly it is ridiculous to say that Darwin's theory of evolution is completely incompatible with God. They are not alternatives.

QUOTE: "Neo-Darwinism or any other strictly materialist process cannot create the diversity, intricacy, and splendor that we observe. The mechanism of mutation and natural selection is not sufficient." (David’s bold) [dhw: As I said, they and I all reject random mutations.]
"That’s the key to intelligent design theory. It’s not about whether or not life evolved from one or even multiple common ancestors. It’s about whether life required intelligent design in its origin or diversification."

DAVID: I've followed Ann Gauger closely.

So did I. Common descent is the key feature of Darwinism, and ID accepts that it is NOT incompatible with the design theory, and hence with the existence of a designer. Therefore ID does not say Darwinism is “completely wrong”. Only atheistic Neo-Darwinists exclude God. Theistic and agnostic Darwinists, such as the Pope, Charles Darwin and me, did/do not.