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

by dhw, Wednesday, June 26, 2024, 12:13 (148 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I gave you the answer above! An all-knowing God chose this method as the best way to create.

dhw: God chose what you call this “imperfect” and “inefficient” method of deliberately designing and having to cull 99.9 out of 100 species irrelevant to the creation of the only species he wanted to create (us and our food) because that was the best way to do it, even though he was perfectly capable of directly creating any species he wanted (as per Cambrian). Ah well, carry on ridiculing him, if that’s what your theology teaches you.

DAVID: That is what it does.

Your theology teaches you to ridicule God, and you keep telling me I don’t know how to think about God and I am out of touch with theology!

Human attributes

DAVID (Sunday) [...] Of course, He may have human attributes.

DAVID: (Monday) No!! It also means He might not have human-like attributes. That is why Adler insists upon allegorical meanings, an approach you unreasonably hate.

dhw: We’ve dealt with “allegorical” – you have confessed that you have no idea what Adler meant by it, so please stop resorting to it.

DAVID: What are you smoking. I fully understand Adler's use of allegorical.

Last week I asked you to define the word and tell us the difference between “God may want us to worship him” and “Allegorically God may want us to worship him.” Your reply was:
DAVID: I am sure Adler knew the meaning of allegorical when he said to use it.
Now please tell us what he meant, or stop hiding behind your smokescreen.

dhw: The above alternative is correct: either he has human attributes or he doesn’t. He wants to be worshipped or he doesn't. He loves us or he doesn't. We have no way of knowing the truth. It is therefore utterly absurd to say that he “certainly isn’t human in any way” but “of course, he may have human-like attributes”. You are twisting yourself in knots, all for the sake of defending a theory in which you ridicule your perfect God as being an imperfect and inefficient designer.

DAVID: Your problem is you have no knowledge of "How to Think About God", by Adler.

Your problem is that you have created innumerable self-contradictions with your way of thinking about God, as above, and your only answer is to blame them on Adler.

dhw: You can no longer reject my alternative theistic theories on the grounds that they involve human-like attributes. You are of course welcome to stick to the inefficient God you wish to believe in.

DAVID: Of course I reject your humanized God.

You reject a God who has certain “human-like attributes”. Please tell us if Adler or any other theologians think of God as being an imperfect and inefficient designer, and how many theologians believe that their God – who is “certainly not human in any way” – is incapable of loving us and does not want us to worship him.

Fungi (and bacteria)

DAVID: [...] God's main purpose was to create us and our resources.

dhw: “Main”? You have been unable to give us any other purposes, and it is once more utterly absurd to assume that your God specially designed every ecosystem for the last 3.8 billion years for the sole purpose of creating us and our resources.

DAVID: […] Who is running the Earth? Us! How come? Our God-given brains.

How does that prove that your God’s sole purpose for creating and culling 3+ billion years’ worth of species and ecosystems was to produce us?

99.9% versus 0.1%

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: (referring to today’s species) [...] all direct descendants from the 99.9% extinct.

dhw: Now you turn yourself upside down and say all the survivors ARE direct descendants, and you ignore the dinosaur example we agreed on in the first place as an illustration of the percentage of species that were NOT our ancestors.

DAVID: If birds descended from Dinosaurs and we descended from tiny mammals of that same period, what is your problem? Each 0.1% line now here had extinctions to get here, all adding up to Raup's 99.9% lumped extinction rate.

This is getting farcical. Raup’s 99.9% extinction rate includes the vast proportion of species that did not lead to us plus our food. We plus food are descended – as you have so rightly agreed – from the 0.1% of survivors. Of course most of the 0.1% ancestors are also extinct – e.g. the 4 species of dinosaurs from which birds are descended – but they are a tiny proportion of the species that did not lead to us plus food, e.g. the 696 species of dinosaurs that had no descendants. Please tell us why your God designed and had to cull 696 species of dinosaur that had no connection with us, if we and our food were his one and only purpose. Your answer so far: God is an imperfect messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer. And I should read Adler, although he never mentions your ridiculous theory of evolution.