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

by dhw, Friday, June 07, 2024, 11:29 (167 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Adler insists upon allegory!!! His God is all everything. And His purpose was defined in Adler's book: "The difference in Man and the Diffrenceit Makes", that is a proof of God because humans are so unusual. You don't know Adler.

dhw: Our discussions concerning your God’s possible purposes, methods and nature should be based on your beliefs, not on what Adler does or doesn’t say, but most of what YOU say is clearly not supported by Adler. I have, however, long since agreed that the design theory provides a good case for the existence of God. You don’t need human “unusualness” for that, since the complexities of all living organisms are such that they appear to be designed. We have dealt with “allegory” before, and you agreed that the question is not the meaning of the words we use, but whether they apply to God. “All everything” tells us absolutely nothing: God would then be all-good and all-evil, all-loving and all-hating, omnipotent and powerless, omniscient and totally ignorant.

DAVID: Yes, human unusualness is very necessary. Our brain is like nothing else in the universe.

Very necessary for what? The universe managed to exist before we did, and so did countless life forms. I keep agreeing that as far as we know, we are unique. How does that answer the points I have made above about “allegory” and “all everything”. Please stop dodging.

DAVID: God wanted all of evolution as it happened, because it produced all of the organisms humans can use. You are purposely blind to this purpose.

dhw: You agreed long ago that “all of evolution” did not produce humans or our food. 99.9% of evolution had no connection with us and our food. […] as follows:

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived?
DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

DAVID: More nonsense. The 0.1% required the 99.9% to go extinct!!! Pure Raup.

dhw: You keep hiding behind Adler and Raup, even though they don’t support you! You have told us that Raup’s point is that extinctions are important because evolution progresses through new conditions which cause the extinction of the 99.9%. These trigger the arrival of new species that evolve from the 0.1% of survivors. All a matter of luck. Nothing to do with your God deliberately designing and culling 99.9% of failures in order to produce humans plus food, because he inherited some idiotic rule that made him do it that way!

DAVID: The big difference. I apply God to Raup's discussion, while you are pure chance evolution.

I am not pure chance. I am an agnostic. You are distorting Raup by applying God to his theory of pure chance.

DAVID (under “stromatolites"): Not luck if by design.

dhw: If your God wanted a free-for-all, he would have designed the conditions that would lead to a free-for-all. Survival by luck (Raup) does not mean survival by design (Turell).

DAVID: God does not deal in Raupian luck.

dhw: And Raup does not deal in godly design, so please stop distorting his theory, and once again, please stop denying your own agreement that we and our food are NOT descended from the 99.9% of species that ever lived.

DAVID: No, descended from the 0.1% survivors who arrived because of 99.9% who went extinct. Stop truncating Raup!

They did not arrive because 99.9% went extinct. They arrived because there were new conditions which caused the extinctions but allowed for new forms. Extinct species do not produce new species, as you have agreed above (bolded). Stop dodging!

Evolution

DAVID: Listen to Adler!! "Divine inscrutability precludes us from ever asking the reason why God does anything".

dhw: So please stop telling us that your God’s one and only reason for creating life was to design us and our food, and his reason for designing 99.9 out of 100 species irrelevant to this purpose was that he was obeying some law which he “inherited”, although as first cause he could only have devised any laws himself. And please stop telling us that your God is selfless and certainly not human in any way, since Adler tells you he is all everything, which must include his being 50/50 self-interested and 50/50 endowed with other human attributes (among which you include imperfection and inefficiency in the context of design).

DAVID: None of the now bolded is Adler: "God is no way necessitated to create the universe and must be considered as acting freely." from yesterday means He is selfless in creating. You cannot learn about Adler through me, since his teachings upset your preconceived notions about God.

Your logic is incomprehensible. A God who acts freely is free to indulge in whatever interests him! I don’t wish to argue about what Adler says or means to say. I wish to discuss the various arguments about God’s purpose, methods and nature. I have no preconceived notions about your God, but I offer various theistic alternatives to your own theories. It is you who confess that you “first choose a form of God I wish to believe in. The rest follows.” And the rest is a mass of contradictions which you keep avoiding, even to the extent of quoting Adler and ignoring the implications of what you quote. See above.