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

by dhw, Saturday, August 31, 2024, 10:12 (16 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 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.

I know what selflessness means. But when you suggested that your God enjoyed creating, was interested in his creations, and might want us to recognize and worship him, you knew exactly what you meant, and you were proposing that he might have attributes which are NOT SELFLESS. This contradicts your belief that he is selfless and therefore they CANNOT apply to him. Hence your confession that your beliefs are “schizophrenic”.

Under “Theodicy” I repeated a list of your direct self-contradictions.

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, and using human attributes that are no less “high” than those you yourself have proposed.

DAVID: 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.

Once again, you impose your wishes on him, and ignore the contradictions into which they lead you. Your messy, cumbersome, imperfect, inefficient designer (all YOUR adjectives) hardly fits in with you all-knowing, all-powerful God. This incongruity is echoed even in your very next statement:

DAVID: 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 in some ways? Possibly.

If he is not human in any way, how can we possibly reflect him in some ways???

DAVID: Does He care about us? 50/50.

But you have stated categorically that you reject deism because “God made us. He must care about the results." That = 100% he cares. And above you say he is not human in any way, but caring is a human attribute, in which case you say he must be 100% non-caring.

DAVID: When you pose direct questions to me about God, all I can offer are guesses within the perimeters of my beliefs.

And your guesses, based on “How to think about God”, are riddled with such contradictions that you YOURSELF regard them as “schizophrenic”.

99.9% v 0.1%

DAVID: [...] 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.

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

Our great-grandparents are dead, but our species is still going strong, and is directly descended from the 0.1% of species that survived Raup’s extinctions. The 99.9% of extinct species includes those of our ancestral species (e.g. all the hominids and homos) that have disappeared. Are you still pretending that 696 dinosaur species which had no descendants are our ancestors?

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?

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

So now you have your God designing 100% of species unconnected with us and our food for 3000,000,000 years, and you have 696 dinosaur species as the ancestors of current species although they had no descendants. This apparently proves that 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived were the ancestors of us and our food, although you agree that we and our contemporaries are descended only from the 0.1% of survivors! But you never contradict yourself!