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

by dhw, Saturday, September 28, 2024, 08:28 (20 days ago) @ David Turell

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?

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

Firstly, the above proposals were all yours, not mine. I find them perfectly feasible, but you have rejected them on the grounds that your God is selfless. Secondly, whether you agree or disagree with your own proposals or with others that I might make (e.g. the desire to learn new things, or to create a fascinating free-for-all) still doesn’t mean that these human-like attributes turn God into a human being. They simply confirm that your starting point is what you want your God to be, despite all the contradictions.

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: '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.

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

You have agreed that current species are descended from the 0.1% of survivors, and you insist that all our ancestor species were created “de novo” during the slice of evolution we call the Cambrian. Stop dodging.

DAVID: 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?

We have already dealt with this! Yes, our extinct ancestors are part of the 99.9% that are now extinct, but they in turn were part of the 0.1% that survived past extinctions! You keep ignoring the fact that Raup’s figures) are based on all those “slices” of evolution that culminated in extinctions. Back in April you wrote: “His study was to explain why extinctions happened as a necessary part of evolution. He concluded ‘bad luck’. Well-adapted species suddenly were unprepared for new circumstances. The losses cumulatively were 99.9% with 0.1% as survivors.” Plural extinctions = slices, cumulatively = an average, and do please explain to me how species that cannot survive under new circumstances are nevertheless capable of creating new species. Only the survivors can do that, which is why you agreed that we are descended from the 0.1% of survivors!

Theodicy

DAVID: […] 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.

(*** Also back in April, in the context of a free-for-all, I wrote: “I’m sure you’ll agree that your God, who you believe is interested in his creations, would find puppets pretty boring." You replied: “Exactly!”)

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.

DAVID: 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.

If your God gave life forms freedom of action like ours, you have what I call a free-for-all. (See “disordered patterns” on the “more miscellany” thread.)