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

by dhw, Tuesday, September 03, 2024, 08:53 (13 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: Does He care about us? 50/50.
DAVID: God is not human in any way.
DAVID: Of course he may have human-like attributes.
DAVID: God is perfect, selfless, and in no way has human attributes.
DAVID: Why can’t a non-human have human characteristics?

These are all recent statements by your schizophrenic self.

DAVID: Your free-floating view of God has no basis as you constantly propose Him in a most human way. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: YOU proposed that he enjoyed creating, was interested in his creations, and may have created us because he wanted a relationship with us, and wanted us to recognize and worship him. Then you rejected your own proposals on the grounds that you think your God is selfless. My alternatives to the imperfect and inefficient theory of evolution you impose on your God are based on some of the above human attributes, and as you rightly ask:”Why can’t a non-human have human characteristics?”

DAVID: I rejected nothing. We don't know if God seeks self-satisfaction. My proposals you listed are human wishes for God. WE DO NOT KNOW IF THEY ARE APPLICABLE.

Apart from your “selfless” God, none of the above are human wishes. They are simply theories concerning his possible reasons for creating life and us. This is a red letter day in the history of the AgnosticWeb! At last you now accept the possibility that your God may act out of self-interest and other human-like attributes instead of sticking to (I quote:) your “rigid principle; God is not human in any way.” You have therefore not rejected the possibility that he created a free-for-all because he enjoys creating and watches his creations with interest, or that he experiments in order to make new discoveries or in order to achieve the goal you wish him to have (a being in some ways like himself, or “in his own image”, as per Genesis, Chapter 1). We do not know if he is selfless, all-good, or even omniscient and omnipotent. And we shall never again hear you complain that alternative theories to your own are nonsense because they “humanize” your God, since you now recognize that your non-human God might well have human characteristics.

99.9% v 0.1%

DAVID: Dinosaurs gave us birds. Do you eat chicken, goose, or turkey? Dinosaurs existed to support humans.

dhw: 696 dinosaur species gave us no descendants at all. 4 dinosaur species gave us birds. […] How can 4 out of 700 = 99.9%? Why do you keep ignoring your own agreement:

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: So please stop shooting yourself in the foot.

DAVID: You have the holey foot! Raup's statistics are a lump view. You are splitting evolution up into tiny parts. We are current survivors.

Of course we are current survivors. Raup’s “lump view” is that 99.9% of all life forms are now extinct. You claim that all 99.9% were the ancestors of us, the survivors, although for 3,000,000,000 pre-Cambrian years you say NONE of the life forms were our ancestors, and through some remarkable mathematical formula you think that 4 dinosaur ancestors = 99.9% of 700, 696 of which were not our ancestors. It is you who have split evolution into pre-Cambrian and post-Cambrian and who have imposed an absurd interpretation on Raup’s bare statistic that 99.9% became extinct and only 0.1% survived (by sheer luck).

Theodicy

dhw: From today’s Sunday Times: “A study in the Lancet medical journal found there were 4.95 million deaths in 2019 linked to drug-resistant bacterial infections worldwide, of which 1.278 million were directly attributable to superbugs.”

dhw: You have stated that their existence is God’s “fault”, and theorized that he may have designed them as a test or challenge to us humans. [...] how and why would a caring, all-good God […] want to test or challenge us by deliberately creating these weapons of mass destruction? Or do you now wish to retract this theory?[...]

DAVID: My view is God knew all of the eventual side effects and knew we could solve the problems on our own.

We still have a long way to go, as millions continue to suffer and die. Why do you think he wanted to test/challenge us with these murderous problems? It’s no answer to say that he knew we would eventually pass the test! Why “test” us in the first place? For his enjoyment as he watches us fail? Is sadism one of the human characteristics he may or may not have? Or is he not omnipotent after all, and was unable to control what you kindly call the “side effects” of the free-for-all he created? Or could he simply have detached himself from the world he created, like the deist God whom you rejected a week or so ago on the grounds that your God “must care” (although apparently you have rejected nothing)? Or do you now wish to retract that particular theory of evil as a test or challenge?