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

by David Turell , Friday, September 27, 2024, 18:37 (20 days ago) @ dhw

Contradictions

DAVID: My non-human God can be compared to my dog in the sense that non-human individuals can logically have human-like attributes without in any way be human.

dhw: Precisely.

dhw: […] For instance, your beliefs that your God is benevolent, or might enjoy creating, or might want to be recognized and worshipped, are all human-like attributes but they do not “humanize” him, any more than your dog’s love for you and desire to be loved by you make him a human being.

DAVID: We agree here.

dhw: So please stop all this nonsense about my alternative theories “humanizing” God.

DAVID: You don't recognize your God thinks like a human in His suggestions for actions.

dhw: You’ve just agreed that he can think like a human without being a human! What are you arguing about?

The proposals your God makes are typically human and not God-like as I view God.

99.9% v 0.1%

dhw: […] please tell us why you reject your own pre-Cambrian theory (our ancestors were created “de novo”, so 100% of pre-Cambrian species were non-ancestral), and the dinosaur example (99.43% non-ancestral), and why you were insane when you agreed that we are descended from the 0.1% of survivors and not the 99.9% of the species that became extinct.

DAVID: All of previous life is our ancestors from pre-Cambrian until now.

All of previous life is from pre-Cambrian till now. But according to you, we had no pre-Cambrian ancestors!

DAVID: 'De Novo Cambrians' are a phenotypical view of that event.

dhw: You have constantly used the Cambrian “de novo” gap as evidence of your God’s existence: you point out that there are no fossils to indicate any transitional forms that could be considered as our ancestors.

Phenotypically correct, but you are again ignoring the biochemistry that is continuous.

DAVID: As for your bolds, the 99.9% extinct produced the 0.1% surviving, pure Raup dinosaurs be damned. We are part of the lumped surviving.

dhw: Yes, we are part of the lumped 0.1% of survivors, and we are NOT descended from the 99.9% extinct, and still you refuse to tell us why you were insane when you agreed.

But we are descended from extinct forms. You keep slicing up evolution into animal forms when the overall statistics are correct. Yes, we are in the survivor group, and we have extinct ancestors in the 99.9% group. Right?

Theodicy

DAVID: I look at God as presenting a challenging form of life. We have the God-given brains for it.

dhw: Now you’ve gone back to the challenge or test theory, which suggests the deliberate creation of evil to see if we could conquer it with our brains. And somehow that is meant to confirm that your God is all-powerful and all-good.

DAVID: Only an all-powerful could create life. Anything evil is a side effect.

dhw: So now you discard the challenge theory, the boredom theory, the fact that you blame God for natural disasters and murderous bugs (not to mention murderous humans), and his reliance on us to cure what he can’t cure….Evil is only a side effect, so let’s ignore it.

DAVID: Not ignore it. Accept it as the only way it can be, as God produced it.

dhw: You have now discarded all the theories listed above, and your answer to the question of how an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God can produce evil is that we must accept the evil because for some reason life cannot exist without the natural disasters and murderous bugs for which you blame him, or without the evil he knowingly enabled us to commit by giving us free will.

The life we live is the only life that can work. Earthquakes are part of life-giving plate tectonics. Most bugs are important for us as in microbiomes I've previously listed. Bugs moving into bad places are a problem, but life's forms have freedom of action, like you do