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

by dhw, Tuesday, May 14, 2024, 11:50 (191 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […]you have thrown out all your own suggestions (enjoyment and interest, avoidance of boredom, desire to be recognized and worshipped) as they conflict with your wish that he should be selfless.

DAVID: As usual you are lost by trying to conflate human statements about possible God traits with fact. We have no facts. My God is selfless as He creates, which means there are no motives in what He does.

Yet another straw man of your own making. Of course there are no facts. Even your God’s existence is not a fact. But YOU have offered guesses – as listed above – and now in this response, you even reject your own guesses with a statement that purports to be a fact! “My God is selfless.” And the God you have always described as purposeful has no motives, although you insist that his one and only motive for creating life was to produce us and our food, and at the end of this post you inaccurately tell me that my alternatives have “no goals in sight”!

DAVID: Of course, we 'want' a loving God. NOTE: Adler gives 50/50 odds that He does! That is how to think about God, not your total confusion on the subject.

It is you who start out with the God you wish for: omnipotent, omniscient, all-good, selfless. And it is you who offer guesses and then withdraw them because they clash with other guesses which you treat as facts. And it is you who cling to certain fixed beliefs which you can’t defend. If “how to think about God” means to keep an open mind, I am far closer to your theologians than you are! (See "More miscellany" for more of your "total confusion".)

Evolution and Raup

DAVID: The evolution comment is to answer your gross distortion of evolution by God. 99.9% of extinctions were required, per Raup.

dhw: According to your description of Raup’s argument, he just told us that for evolution to continue, there had to be changing conditions which would result in new species that would live under those conditions, and in the extinction of those that could not live under those conditions. You have agreed that Raup never said that there is a God who controls evolution and who is forced to design and cull 99.9 out of 100 species that are irrelevant to his one and only goal. It is you who have grossly distorted Raup to fit in with what you wish to believe.

DAVID: Read Raup!!! You have totally distorted him, as I have presented him. I know him, you do not.

This is how you presented him:
DAVID (April 21st): His study was to explain why extinctions happened as a necessary part of evolution. He concluded 'bad luck'. Well-adapted species suddenly were unprepared for new circumstances. The loses cumulatively were 99.9% with 0.1% as survivors.

Yes, extinctions are necessary, as I have bolded above. You have agreed that he never mentions God, let alone your illogical theory of evolution, and “bad luck” is the exact opposite of your view of evolution as conforming to a plan. Now tell me what I have distorted.

Humanization

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I won't moan about your humanized God you have aptly described. We do not know what God, having produced us, wants or needs from us. Briefly, does God have motives of any sort? We humans can invent all sorts of possibilities like you invent for your humanized guy. God may have none like my selfless guy.

dhw: […] I like this new approach, in which you acknowledge that all your inventions, which you call your “very specific beliefs”, could be totally wrong, and one or other of my alternative inventions could be right. We are making progress, though sadly it only lasts until the “More miscellany” thread.

DAVID: Of course it doesn't last. Your constant distortions of God, because you do not know how to think about Him following theological rules, leads to my rebuttals.

dhw: What rebuttals? You keep “rebutting” your own thoughts about God, but you have agreed that my logic is “impeccable”, and I’m still waiting to hear what “theological rules” force you to start with what you wish to believe and to contradict yourself over and over again, and yet forbid me to propose logically impeccable alternatives. (See “More miscellany” for your efforts to make fools of your fellow theologians.)

DAVID: The only impeccable reasoning I laud is your humanized God is logical in what He does, because you have made Him so human. No theologians would recognize Him being entertained, experimenting, no goals in sight.

I dislike the word “entertain” and prefer the terms you were certain of: that he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations. And as usual you pretend that enjoyment, the desire to make new discoveries, or the quest to find a particular formula, cannot count as “goals”. Above, you’ve suddenly decided he has NO motives, which = no purpose of goal! Your guesses concerning enjoyment, desire to be recognized and worshipped, desire to prevent boredom etc. are no less human than mine. Thank you for repeating your appreciation of my impeccable reasoning. I wish I could return the compliment!