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

by David Turell , Friday, August 30, 2024, 19:43 (17 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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.

Do you understand what I write? God's selflessness means He requires nothing for Himself from what He creates. Can we attribute our human characteristics to God? Yes, in an allegorical way not knowing how they apply to God who is not human. The problem is yours.

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 99.9% extinct produced the 0.1% living, per Raup's statistics.

dhw: 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.

Nonsense! We are part of the current 0.1% surviving. Our great-grand parents are in the 99.9% extinct.

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

dhw: 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?

The sum of all evolved organisms from the Cambrian onward: 99.9% are the ancestors of the current 0.1%,

Theodicy

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

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.

dhw: 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”.

As answered above: "Do you understand what I write? God's selflessness means He requires nothing for Himself from what He creates. Can we attribute our human characteristics to God? Yes, in an allegorical way not knowing how they apply to God who is not human. The problem is yours." The God I choose to imagine is unlike yours in all ways. He is all-knowing and as a result does not require experimentation or entertainment as if He were human. As I view God there are no contradictions. I start with the rigid principle; God is not human in any way. Do we reflect Him is some ways? Possibly. Does He care about us? 50/50. When you pose direct questions to me about God, all I can offer are guesses within the perimeters of my beliefs.
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