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

by David Turell , Saturday, June 08, 2024, 18:59 (91 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: It is no answer merely to repeat that Adler insists on allegory, and God is “all-everything”

All everything is obviously a shorthand for all of God's all-powerful abilities

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

dhw: 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).

DAVID: Again, you are with pure chance to have evolution. Extinct forms are the ancestors of the living. I interpret the bold as you saying dead forms do nothing. Stop the foolishness.

dhw: The foolishness is yours, since you agree that we and our food are descended from the 0.1% of survivors, not from the other 99.9%, i.e. our extinct ancestors came from the 0.1% of earlier survivors, as you have confirmed above (bolded).

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

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

DAVID: Not distorted as a belief!

dhw: Your belief that your God had to design and cull 99.9 out of 100 species irrelevant to his sole purpose is a distortion of Raup’s theory, which does not even mention your God.

No, it is not distorted. I plug God as designer to an unchanged evolution process and suddenly 99.9% ancestors count as nothing? The surviving 0.1% were created by the 99.9% extinct. Do you deny that?

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” […] 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 […]

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I fully understand Adler. You don't or don't want to since it upsets your convictions about what a God may be.

dhw: I have no “convictions”. You are describing yourself, as bolded above. The question is not whether you understand Adler but whether you can defend the arguments you say he offers. You have agreed there is no “allegory” but the simple question of whether your God does or doesn’t want to be worshipped etc. If he is “all-everything”, he must be good and bad, selfish and selfless etc. Since you fully understand Adler, please tell us what else the word might mean.

Answered above in part. All everything applies to all of God's powers. I have not agreed to your use of allegory. Whether God wishes to be worshiped or not is unknown since the word worship is applied allegorically to God's wishes.