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

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 03, 2024, 20:08 (13 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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 ...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.

I won't stop complaining about your humanly imagined God as described above now in red. That God is not human in any way is an obvious point made strongly by Adler. Since God made us as thinking beings, we must reflect Him in some unknown ways. To turn it around how does God reflect us, again unknown. My guesses, you have listed above, ARE human wishes for relationship with God, not simply reasons for our creation.

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.

dhw: Of course we are current survivors. Raup’s “lump view” is that 99.9% of all life forms are now extinct. ...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).

Thank you for repeating Raup! 99.9% extinct with 0.1% lucky survivors. No slivers of dinosaur productions to birds needed or in any way applicable to Raup's overall statistics. Mammals lived with dinosaurs and became us after many extinctions, another sliver of overall evolution.

Theodicy

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

dhw: 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?

The side effects are a challenge to us with or without God. I cannot get your brain to understand that living biochemistry involves freely-acting molecules proforming functions at trillions of times a second throughout our bodies. It is a way that makes life exist. We know of no other way, so it must be the only way. It will have mistakes, a point noted by God who has editing systems throughout. You are here, a normal human like 99.9% of all humans. An impressive result for your imagined bumbling God who can't make it perfect!