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

by dhw, Saturday, May 11, 2024, 08:26 (120 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If I ask you why you think your God specially created us, and you “guess” that he wanted us to recognize his work and worship him, you simply contradict yourself when you insist that he has no self-interest.

DAVID: Two periods of discussion conflict. My God has no self-interest desires. He does not need to have us worship Him; that is our decision to make. Recognizing His existence falls into the same area of thought. He doesn't need our recognition. Every one of these concepts are human projections as to how to relate to God and wondering how He might relate to us. Your constant humanizing of God is what confuses you about this subject.

You always use the word “need”, and I keep telling you that want and need are not the same thing. We need food, and without it, we'll die. I do not for one moment imagine your God saying he can’t go on without my worshipping him. I asked why you thought he specially created us? YOU suggested that he wanted recognition and worship. So why are you trying to blame me for your own answer to my question? He has no self-interest is just as much a guess as he wants us to worship him. So you are arguing against yourself, not me.

DAVID: We don't know what God wants. Leave it at that.

Thank you for using the word want.

DAVID: Get it through your head! See above for my approach to a selfless God. My answers to your completely direct questions are what raise conflict in your mind. My polite guesses aren't written in stone. He may appreciate our interest in Him, but they are of no consequence toHim. Plese in your thought remove any human trace, and then I might make sense to you.

What is the point of your polite guesses if you now tell us that you know they are totally wrong? Why should I “remove any human trace” after you have agreed that he probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours? Why would a purposeful God want to create us in the first place if what we did was of no interest or consequence to him?

DAVID: I don't contradict. You distort the conclusions.

dhw: I’ve given you whole lists of contradictions, including those earlier in this post, and as I wrote yesterday: "Your whole messed-up “theology” is encapsulated by your two statements that he probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours, but he is certainly not human in any sense. And the endless contradictions stem from your self-confessed approach to all matters concerning your God’s purpose, method and nature: ”I first choose a God I wish to believe in. The rest follows.”

DAVID: I follow the all-everything God of the monotheistic religions, warts and all.

dhw: On the “More miscellany" thread, you dismissed my comment that unpredictability was more interesting than a puppet show, because “this is no recognizable form of theism.” I listed some of your theories (boredom, inefficiency, might-not-want to be worshipped etc.) that have no place in the monotheistic religions you claim to follow “warts and all"...

DAVID: More of your discontinuous criticisms. I make my own considered theism.

So you follow the all-everything God of the monotheistic religions, warts and all, but you don’t, because you pride yourself on making your own theism.

DAVID: I ignore your purposeful distortion of evolutionary statistics as Raup presented. […] Raup simply said all of evolution to the present produced 99.9% extinctions, a natural result of the process. A very purposeful distortion to denigrate God. You would say that if God were not in the picture.

dhw: Raup never mentions God! He merely states what is now a generally accepted statistic. But you don’t believe in what you call “natural evolution”. You believe your God controlled it, and you believe his sole purpose was us and our food, but only 0.1% were the ancestors of current species, and so you believe your God deliberately designed and culled the other 99.9%, but you don’t know why. Stop dragging Raup into it. The bold is your illogical denigration of your God – ridiculing his messy, cumbersome inefficiency.

DAVID: Of course Raup never mentions God. I put God into action running evolution and you go nuts over Raup's statistics. It is the same inefficient evolution with or without God!!!

It’s only inefficient if you believe (a) that your God controlled it, and (b) that he messed up the way in which he fulfilled the purpose you impose on him! If his purpose was to create an interesting and varied free-for-all, he got precisely what he wanted. If he wanted to experiment, make discoveries, enjoy trying new ideas, he got what he wanted. And if there is no God, there are no purposes other than those we and our fellow creatures create for ourselves (mainly survival). And please don’t moan that my response “humanizes” God. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that your God does not have thought patterns and emotions like ours. Indeed you wrote that he probably does.