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

by dhw, Tuesday, August 27, 2024, 09:14 (20 days ago) @ David Turell

(Reminders:
DAVID: Nothing in my thoughts is contradictory.
DAVID: I reject deism. God made us. He must care about the results.
DAVID: “God is not human in any way.”
DAVID: Of course He may have human-like attributes.

DAVID: You constantly avoid my point: 'God cares' has a direct meaning for us, BUT as a supernatural personage we cannot know how He 'cares, if He does. Thus allegorical meanings appear.

dhw: When you ask whether he cares about us, you know precisely what you mean by the term – is he interested, does he have any feelings of goodwill towards us? Look at the above: “He must care…” And YOU actually told us that he is benevolent! The question is whether he does or does not have the feelings YOU mean when you talk of caring. “Allegorical” is meaningless here! Does he or does he not care for us according to our definition of “care”? Please stop this silly obfuscation.

DAVID: You make the same point without the hated word.

Since we now agree, would you please acknowledge that your combined statements above are contradictory: “God must care for us” indicates that he definitely has a human attribute; “God may have human attributes” indicates that human attributes are possible; “God is not human in any way” means God cannot possibly have any human attributes. Nobody knows what God is like, so may I suggest you now stick to the 4th statement: “He may have human-like attributes”. This will enable us to discuss the different theories concerning his possible purposes, methods and nature without all the distractions of your schizophrenic contradictions.

dhw: Let’s have a straight answer: Do you or do you not believe that your God might possibly enjoy creating, be interested in his creations, care about us, want to be recognized and worshipped by us – all according to your own definition of each term?

DAVID: Of course, God may be as you question me.

Thank you. They were all your own suggestions. Of course I agree with your “may be”. Your claim elsewhere that your God is selfless is also a “may be”, but it conflicts with these agreed possibilities and leaves wide open the question of your God’s purpose in creating life and especially humans. This leads us to your theory of evolution.

dhw: You have claimed that your God deliberately created and then had to cull 99.9 out of 100 species both pre and post Cambrian that were irrelevant to the only purpose you allow him to have, although he was perfectly capable of creating species directly (as in the Cambrian). That is why you have called your perfect God’s method of achieving his goal imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient.

Do you now accept that at least part of your theory may be wrong, and that the 99.9% “may be” part of his possible enjoyment of a free-for-all, or of experimenting to make new discoveries, or to create a being with thought patterns and emotions like his own? (All perfectly efficient means of achieving his goal.)

99.9% versus 0.1%

DAVID: […] The 99.9% are the direct ancestors of the surviving 0.1% which are here. [...].

You next rephrase this, to make it sound less direct:

DAVID: 99.9% went extinct to produce 0.1% extant is an overall view!

99.9% went extinct, but they did not “produce” (i.e. they were not the ancestors of) the 0.1% of survivors that led to the current species. Once more:
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 0.1% surviving.

dhw: Example: 696 dinosaur species became extinct and had no descendants. 4 dinosaur species evolved into current species. How could the 696 dinosaurs have been direct ancestors of current species if they had no descendants?

DAVID: I am describing a conglomerated statistic, while you stick to a tired single example of one hereditary line.

The “conglomerated” statistic is that, as you have agreed, 99.9% of species went extinct without having any descendants. The surviving 0.1% were the ancestors who produced the current 0.1%. The “tired example” is directly relevant to us and our contemporaries. You are simply tired of being reminded that only 4 out of 700 dinosaur species “produced” descendants that are alive today. You also forget your claim that we and our contemporary species are directly descended from species your God designed “de novo” during the Cambrian. This means that according to you, not even one form of life for 3,000,000,000 years prior to the Cambrian could have been our direct ancestor. Please stop shooting yourself in the foot with your self-contradictions.

Theodicy

dhw: […] please tell us why you think he would have wanted to challenge us by setting us a test? And if he did so, why would he not be interested in the result?

DAVID: God might follow our actions.

Why would he challenge us with a test if he was not interested in our response to the test? But maybe he didn’t create them as a test. Maybe he let them create themselves in a free-for-all, and doesn’t care if they kill us. (See your Adler’s 50/50, which you agree with but disagree with.)