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

by David Turell , Friday, September 20, 2024, 20:01 (6 hours, 13 minutes ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Adler told me how to think about God, who God was, but not how to reach my own ideas. No schools think as I do. You have yet to tell us your experts.

dhw: Nobody knows who God is/was, you have admitted that your conclusions are not Adler’s, and you now admit that YOU “ignore all schools of human thoughts about theology” (i.e. every single so-called “expert” on the subject), so why are you blaming me for pointing out all your contradictions and for offering alternatives which you dismiss because they do not spring from someone else’s ideas? Your usual double standards. In any case, my alternatives happen to fit in with aspects of deism and process theology (two schools of human thoughts about theology), which you rejected because they were not “mainstream”. More double standards.

Thank you for showing us deism and process theology as your background sources. It explains your preference for a humanized form of God. An interacting process God is different than the way I view God. We start at different God's, so you should not berate me for my starting point. You have one also.

99.9% v 0.1%

dhw: […] you continue to ignore your very own agreement that the current 0.1% is NOT DESCENDED FROM ALL THE CREATURES THAT EVER LIVED BUT ONLY FROM THE 0.1% OF SURVIVORS. In other words, extinct species leave no descendants,

DAVID: The bold is insanity! Most extinct species left descendants. The tiny mouse-like mammals of dinosaur times are our extinct ancestors.

dhw: Yes, they were Raup’s 0.1% of survivors. (It may well be that they were more than 0.1%, but they would certainly have been a small minority.) I note that you have completely ignored your own theory that 100% of pre-Cambrian organisms (i.e. the first 3,000,000,000 years of life on earth) failed to produce a single ancestor. Now would you please explain to us why you were insane when in reply to my question “Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of the creatures that ever lived?” you wrote: “No. From 0.1% surviving.”[/b]

DAVID: An indirect strawman question: The 0.1% survivors are direct descendants of the 99.9% extinct.

dhw: The tiny mouselike mammals were part of Raup’s 0.1% of species that survived Chicxculub. They were not descendants of the 700 species of dinosaur that became extinct. Nor are we, as you have agreed. And you continue to ignore your own theory that for 3,000,000,000 years not even 0.1% of species provided our ancestors. Please stop dodging!

Again, you are confused by using specific examples. Raup's statistics are overall estimates with all species lumped together. That is a view I favor. Of course, our start was evolved along with dinosaurs, so your worry about three billion prior years has no basis. It took time to evolve us!

Theodicy

dhw: […] you keep trying to confine the topic to the inevitability of mistakes in the life system your God was forced to invent (it was “the only way”) if he wanted to design us and our food. And you even have him trying to correct those mistakes, but failing and relying on us to help him. This has nothing to do with theodicy (the problem of evil) but is simply another example of an omnipotent, omniscient God’s inefficiency (as in his use of evolution). Meanwhile, you completely ignore your own statement that “What is fair is to blame God for natural disasters: earthquakes, terrible storms and bugs causing diseases”, and you ignore the fact that your God deliberately and knowingly gave humans the freedom to commit all their own evil deeds. You also emphasize the freedom of cells to ignore your God’s instructions, but you still refuse to accept the possibility that if your God exists, he designed life as a free-for-all and not a puppet show. A Garden of Eden would have been boring. Might this not be a possible answer to your question: "Why would a benevolent God deliberately create the chaos of a murderous free-for-all?"

DAVID: As usual you totally ignored my point. What we have is the only way God could do it. We and God are stuck with it.

dhw: I have not ignored it. See the first sentence above and its implications. You continue to ignore the rest of my post. Once more: why do you blame God for the natural disasters and for the murderous bugs, and do you now accept that your theory concerning his vain attempts to counter these evils and his need for human help can only mean he is not omnipotent or omniscient? And do you believe that his deliberate gift of free will to humans, knowing that they will use it to commit evil, fits in with your belief that your God is all-good and benevolent, as opposed to the theory that we and your God would have found a Garden of Eden boring?

God's 'deliberate gift' was our brain, which came with free will, which, in turn, allows us to fight evil and help God to correct all the problems as best we can. So, God made a challenging reality because of the freedom-of-action that makes life possible and presents problems all at once. IT CAN NOT BE ANY OTHER WAY. This does not reduce God's powers as you try to claim. Life cannot be perfect and that automatically excludes a Garden of Eden. Thus, God did not decide for a missing Garden of Eden! It was never a philosophic decision.