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

by dhw, Monday, June 17, 2024, 11:41 (157 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] your theory is that from the very beginning, your omniscient, omnipotent God only wanted to design humans plus food, and he was perfectly capable of designing species “de novo”. You insist that he did so during the Cambrian, and these were the species from which we are descended. The question is not why the 99.9% had to go extinct, but why he designed them in the first place if he knew they would not lead to the fulfilment of his one and only purpose and he would have to cull them. Stop dodging.

DAVID: Your imagined God you create for me ignores His ability for direct creation. Why?

Bolded above, “de novo” means directly. You don’t you read what I write. Why?

DAVID: God has the right to choose any method He wishes to use at any point in time. Since I believe God created the historical evolutionary record we have, His assumed reasoning must fit that record. That makes it logical to assume God both direct creates and also evolves as He wishes, for His own reasons.

Precisely. It is therefore totally absurd to assume that even though he had the power to create his desired species directly, he designed and then had to cull species irrelevant to his one and only purpose. You reject all of my logical, theistic explanations that have your God doing what he wished to do, and stick rigidly to your ridicule of him as an imperfect, messy, cumbersome, and inefficient designer.

DAVID: My entry today on brain structure is from His evolution and demonstrates that we were His purpose, as Adler proposed in his proof of God.

The unique complexity of our brain demonstrates nothing more than the fact that our brain is uniquely complex. It does not explain why your God had to design and cull 99.9 out of 100 species irrelevant to us. A dog’s nose is at least 1000 times more sensitive to smell than ours. What does that prove or "demonstrate"? The argument is not about proof of your God’s existence but about his purpose, method and nature. Stop dodging.

DAVID: I do not consider the 99.9% as irrelevant, but necessary ancestors of the 0.1% surviving.

dhw: […] if 696 out of 700 species of dinosaur did not produce any descendants, how could they have been the necessary ancestors of the species that survived? (Yet again: dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from the 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived? DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.) Please stop disagreeing with yourself!

DAVID: I only object to your throwing out the 99.9% as pointless.

Now that you have at last and yet again agreed that we are not descended from the 99.9%, do please tell us the “point” of your omniscient God deliberately creating them, though he knew he would have to cull them. I’ll help you: you can’t tell us. Only your perfect, omniscient God knows why he would choose the imperfect, messy, cumbersome, inefficient combination of purpose and method you have invented and imposed on him.

God’s nature

dhw: Perhaps I should preface all these discussions by emphasizing that I am not expressing beliefs. Even God's existence is 50/50 for me. I offer nothing but theories and possibilities which seem feasible to me in the light of life's history. And I criticise beliefs and/or theories which seem to me to be illogical and self-contradictory.

DAVID: Accepted.

dhw: […] Please stop contradicting yourself and trying to hide behind Adler.

DAVID: I can't hide behind Adler. He taught me. All of your suggestions form a humanized God. A true God does not become bored, require experimentation to reach his goals or get excited over new inventions.

dhw: Once more: Adler tells you that whoever God is, is “up for grabs” and is a “totally unknown personage”, but apparently you know better: you actually know what a “true God” is like. Since just a few months ago, when you were certain that he enjoyed creating and was interested in his creations, would be bored by an Eden, might want to be recognized and worshipped and have a relationship with us, probably/possibly has thought patterns and emotions like ours, you have learned that he has none of these attributes.

DAVID: All of my 'certainty' in your mind were opinions of guessing about God. He may or may not have those feelings.

After proposing that he had them, you then said he certainly didn’t have them. Thank you for at last agreeing that he may or may not have those feelings. I shall note this agreement next time you insist that he is “certainly not human in any way”.

DAVID: What I accept as fact is, if there is a God, He wished to create us and give us a perfect planet on which to live.

A pretty good summary of the agnostic position, except that if he exists, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that he also wished to create the 99.9 out of 100 extinct species that had no connection with us. Hence your illogical theory of evolution and my alternative theistic explanations, involving certain human thought patterns and emotions which at long last you once more agree he may or may not have.