More miscellany (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, July 18, 2024, 09:36 (126 days ago) @ David Turell

Schizophrenia

DAVID: God is not schizophrenic, but I approach God in two ways, as a believer and as a sceptic.

dhw: You have never been sceptical about your God’s existence, and your view of him as a schizophrenic is covered on the evolution thread.

DAVID: Not covered, your distortion. See above.

Your two-way approach leads you to tell us that your God is benevolent but is not benevolent, may want us to worship him but doesn’t, may enjoy creating but doesn’t, probably has human attributes but doesn’t. Not schizophrenic?

Theodicy

dhw: Meanwhile, why do you rate the 50 million flu deaths and the extermination of 6 million Jews as small events which should be ignored in a discussion on theodicy?

DAVID: All covered before. The required good far outweighs the byproduct bad.

Your first cause God, creator of all things from the very beginning, creates and allows evil, and that makes him perfect because there is more good than evil. And Fred Bloggs, who lived an exemplary life for 50 years and only spent one day raping and murdering little Sophie, deserves a sainthood.

Back to David’s theory of evolution

DAVID: Your usual distorted view of any evolutionary process which requires culling.

dhw: How many evolutions of life do you know of?

DAVID: The one we both know.

dhw: So please stop talking about “any evolutionary process”. Your God invented a system which, according to you, required designing and then culling 99.9 out of 100 species because they were irrelevant to the purpose you impose on him. What have I distorted?

DAVID: Culling is a required part of any evolution. 'Not irrelevant' is the distortion!!!!

You have just agreed there is only one evolution, and if your God is the first cause, who decided that the only way to create humans plus food was to create and then cull 99.9 out of 100 species because they had no connection with humans plus food? He did, incomprehensibly, which is why you keep ridiculing him as imperfect; cumbersome and inefficient, though your other self insists that he is perfect.

dhw: […] And you absolutely refuse to consider any interpretation of your God’s work that allows him to have a purpose and method which make perfect sense together.

DAVID: Your interpretations humanize God.

dhw: You have agreed explicitly that your God may have human-like attributes, and so you can hardly dismiss my alternatives on the grounds that they entail human-like attributes.

DAVID: Chimp humanlike attributes does not make chimps human.

Precisely. And humanlike attributes do not make God human either. But chimps have them, and one of you (Jekyll?) says your God probably has them, while the other (Hyde?) says he certainly doesn’t.

Genome complexity

DAVID: The cells follow information/directions in the genome. They appear intelligent because their directions are intelligently designed.

dhw: Yet more obfuscation.You have simply changed “instructions” to “information/ directions”. Now please answer my bolded question.

DAVID: Answered! Cells are directed in their actions.

Please confirm: do you think your God has given cells precise instructions on what to do in whatever situations may arise for the rest of time? Yes or no will do.

How we got water

DAVID: Hydrogen and oxygen were among the earliest elements formed. And combined as H2O they create a miracle liquid which is found all over the universe. It is 70% of our surface. Our supply suggests the Earth was especially designed for life to appear.

dhw: And the rest of the universe was especially designed for life not to appear?

DAVID: Water is just one of many requirements for life.

Agreed. You said our water supply suggests the Earth was especially designed for life to appear. Does that mean your God specially designed the rest of the universe for life not to appear?

Biochemical controls

DAVID: The ancestors of these forms that were culled out in their development are part of the same 99.9% dhw always considers unnecessary.

Of course the ancestors of living forms were necessary! Otherwise the living forms would not be here! But the ancestors of living forms are part of the 0.1% that survived the culling and eventually evolved into the current forms, as you have agreed, and as I keep repeating ad nauseam:

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

We were talking then of current species, but of course we do not count bacteria as food. I don’t know if the generally accepted figure of 99.9% extinction also applies to bacteria. Our example was dinosaurs, of which only four species out of 700 were ancestors of living forms.