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

by dhw, Friday, August 30, 2024, 10:25 (17 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

DAVID: 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 problems.

If your God might have created life in order to give himself the enjoyment of creation and interest in an ever changing history, and if he might have created humans to recognize and worship him, then these are all self-centred and denote human-type attributes which you yourself have proposed. You are right – this should not be a problem. It only becomes a problem when you inform us that your God is not human in any way, and you reject the attributes you yourself proposed, on the grounds that you know your God is selfless. You simply refuse to acknowledge such blatant contradictions, as bolded above.

99.9% v 0.1%

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?

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

According to your account, Raup’s statistic is that changing conditions brought about the extinction of 99.9%, leaving only 0.1% of survivors. Common sense alone should tell you that only the survivors could go on to evolve into new species. The 99.9% extinct species “produced” nothing. 696 dinosaur species had no descendants. Only 4 species had descendants.

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!

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

Thank you for continuing to confirm your belief that none of the species that preceded the Cambrian produced the species that exist today. So how could 99.9% of them have “produced” today’s species?

Theodicy

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

I agree. However, you agree and you also disagree, which is the reason this discussion continues. Read your own contradictions:

QUOTES (repeated, as above, since 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. […] What context could they possibly have other than your views of God? […] 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.

DAVID: 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.

The established context is that 99.9% of all species did not lead to us or our contemporaries. Your theory therefore ridicules your all-powerful, all-knowing God as a messy, cumbersome, imperfect and inefficient designer. All three of my alternatives have him thoughtfully doing what he wants to do, using human attributes that are no less “high” than those you yourself have proposed in the midst of numerous self-contradictions which you admit are “schizophrenic”.