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

by dhw, Thursday, May 16, 2024, 11:11 (189 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: We do not know if God has 'motives' in our understanding of the term. I view Him as determined to produce humans and their necessary supplies of food and Earth's minerals, etc.

dhw: Yes, that is the motive you impose on him, and you refuse to consider any other.

DAVID: Why invent others, when His goal, humans, is obvious?

Round and round we go. 1) Why the messy, inefficient design and culling of the 99.9 irrelevant species? 2) What would your purposeful God’s purpose be for producing humans?

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: When will you realize all guesses are conditional!! Now added: I withdraw no guesses. You force that appearance because you illegitimately interpret guesses as declarations of fact.

You have pinpointed the mixture through which you contradict yourself. Example: I ask why your God wanted to produce humans. Your guess: maybe he wants us to recognize and worship him. I point out that this denotes self-interest. Your answer: “My God is selfless, nothing is produced by Him to satisfy self needs.” The latter contradicts the former, and is expressed as if it were a fact. But by all means add a maybe, and then you just have one of your maybe guesses eliminating the other maybe guess. Either way, you can’t escape your contradiction and confusion. Is that “how to think about God”?

Evolution and Raup

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

dhw: 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.[…]

dhw: There is a world of difference between the loss of 99.9% in a natural process governed by luck, and the deliberate creation and destruction of 99.9% in a God-controlled process with one particular purpose in the mind of the controller. Stop accusing me of distorting Raup when it is you who impose a totally different meaning on his statistics.

DAVID: You have simply restated my point! Add God, and evolution is now open to your above quote. It is a complete distortion. If God chose evolution, he knew He would cause multiple extinctions, as part of the realization that evolution only works one way!!! Get it into your thinking, evolution is the same both ways. Again, you purposely denigrate God.

I do not believe that the God you have inserted into Raup’s statement would have said to himself: “In order to produce humans, I have to create lots of different conditions and lots of new species and cull 99.9% of them then start with more new conditions, species and cullings etc. until I get to the Cambrian and directly design “de novo” all the species which I shall later turn into sapiens and his food.” No wonder you ridicule his method as being messy and inefficient – and yet you tell me I’m denigrating your God!!! Raup says it’s all a matter of luck. You say it’s God in control. Which of us is distorting Raup?

Humanization

DAVID: 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 my alternatives are no more humanized than your God, who certainly enjoys creating, wants to be worshipped, is to blame for the bad bugs, messes up evolution with his inefficient design, and probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours.

DAVID: The first bold forces 'certainty' on my thoughts….

Unfortunately, the original quote has now gone into my archive in Austria, but the reason for your certainty was that otherwise he wouldn’t have done it. I remember it precisely because you were certain, and it made perfect sense. I’ve referred to it many times.

DAVID: ….the second offers 'probably' which finally, hopefully understands my approach to possible God's attributes. A complete non-answer.

Why do you make these proposals if later you wish to withdraw them? My alternatives are simply different guesses. Why is a God who might want to create something he enjoys more human than a God who might want to be worshipped?