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

by David Turell , Thursday, August 29, 2024, 16:10 (18 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I don't have it both ways. We don't know if God has any human attributes or wants to have them. He MAY simply create with no self-desires.

dhw: You are learning. Just stop telling us (a) that you reject deism because your God must care for us – which means you think he must have human attributes; b) that your God is not human in any way – which means he does not have any human attributes; c) that he may enjoy, be interested, care for us, want recognition and worship, but he can’t do so because he is selfless; d) that nothing in your thoughts is contradictory.

Obviously, my definition of a selfless God with no-self desires can have all the attributes you list. As a non-human, it is possible God has human similarities. You have invented non-existent poblems.

DAVID: Did your parents produce you? The 99.9% are the producers of the 0.1% surviving.

dhw: Of course my parents produced me! How does that come to mean that 696 dinosaurs who died without descendants produced me and my contemporary species? See below for the next piece of nonsense.

It means 99.5% extinct produced the 0.1% living, per Raup's statistics.

DAVID: "De novo" means no ancestors!!! The Cambrian had no predecessors! I have assumed Ediacaran biochemistry supported Cambrian forms.

dhw: Biochemistry “supports” all life forms. […] You claim that we and our contemporary species are descended from species that had no ancestors. This means that for 3,000,000,000 years prior to the Cambrian, not one of the species your God designed led to us and our contemporaries. Not even 0.1% of them!

DAVID: That is what the Cambrian means.

dhw: Thank you. So the Cambrian means that 100% of pre-Cambrian life forms did not produce ANY of today’s species, just as the 696 out of 700 dinosaurs with no descendants did NOT produce ANY of today’s species, so please stop telling us that the 99.9% produced us and our contemporaries!

Our best view of evolution started with the Cambrian animals which produced the start of all our existing phyla.

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.
And:
DAVID: I'm with Adler. We don't know if God cares for us.

QUOTES (repeated, simce you keep ignoring them):

DAVID: I reject deism. God made us. He must care about the results. (= He cares for us.)
DAVID: God is not human in any way. (= He can’t care for us.)
DAVID: Of course He may have human-like attributes (= He can care for us.)

dhw: You have rightly labelled your beliefs as “schizophrenic”. And this is made painfully clear by your statement that “nothing in my thoughts is contradictory”!

DAVID: Again, old quotes out of context. Old discussions of what God might do. We don't know if God cares for us. All of religion's assumptions have no basis.

dhw: All of the above quotes are very recent and directly contradictory, and none are “out of context”! What context could they possibly have other than your views of God, and why else would you confess to your beliefs being “schizophrenic”? Let’s now agree that we don’t know if God has human attributes, but “of course He may have them”. If he may have them, then please stop rejecting both your own proposals concerning enjoyment, interest, caring, wanting recognition etc. and also my alternative theories (free-for-all, experimentation), on the grounds that he does NOT have human attributes and that you KNOW he is selfless.

You have no established context for a thought-up God. My non-human God would not have to experiment or set up fun-to-watch free-for-alls. It all depends upon the God you wish for. Yours is thoughtlessly highly human.