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

by David Turell , Sunday, September 29, 2024, 17:39 (18 days ago) @ dhw

Contradictions

DAVID: I agree. Your God may make humanized suggestions but he is some sort of God.

dhw: Every God envisaged by every believer is “some sort of God”! You proposed that he might have created life and us because he enjoyed creation, was interested in his creations, and might want us to recognize and worship him, but then you disagreed with yourself because you proposed that he is selfless. You dismiss my alternative theistic theories of evolution on the grounds they “humanize” God, but you agree that having human attributes does not make God a human being. So please stop contradicting yourself, and please stop dismissing alternative theories to your own on the grounds that they “humanize” God.

You don't seem to realize that when I say you humanize God, the proposals your God makes come across as if a human is presenting them, as compared to my vision of God.

99.9% v 0.1%

dhw: 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: The de novo is the phenotypical appearance of Cambrian forms from preceding forms totally different. Only biochemistry and DNA is continuous. Please accept this!

I accept it. I do not accept that the continuous use of biochemistry means that every single life form that ever existed was our ancestor. You don’t accept it either. And when you claim that our ancestors were created “de novo” during the Cambrian, I see no reason why you should then tell us that every life form created before the Cambrian was our ancestor.

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?
And:
DAVID: Everything living came from extinct forms. Extinct species left living species throughout evolution […]. If the extinct left no descendants no one would be here.

dhw: I gave you a complete answer to this, which you have totally ignored. I’ll break it down for you: 1) Raup slices evolution up into extinctions, 2) On average, each extinction results in 99.9% loss and 0.1% survival. 3) Once a species is extinct, it will no longer produce any descendants. 4) Only the 0.1% of survivors will produce descendants. 5) The survivors and their descendants will continue to produce new species until the next extinction, when once again 6) 99.9% will become extinct, and 0.1% will survive and produce new species during the next slice. 7) This process continues right through to the present, in which we and our contemporary species are descendants of the 0.1% that survived the last extinction. It is believed that we ourselves are descended from the tiny proportion of mammals that survived Chixculub, but the only direct descendants are the avians, which constituted 0.57% of dinosaurs. Will you now please at last explain to us why you were insane when you agreed that we and our food are NOT descended from 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived, but from the 0.1% that survived.

Thank you for your complete review of how evolution works. What you left out is evolution is fan-shaped, starting with a small number of species and ending up with the enormous variety now existing. That is how I view the 99.9% extinct. They produced all the forms available for our human use. And finally, of course we are part of the surviving 0.1%, which also contains all other species for our use. I view the present as the end of God's evolutionary process. We are here with all we need.

Theodicy

DAVID: The life we live is the only life that can work.

(See under "Biochemical controls" on the "more miscellany" thread re "availability".)

DAVID: 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.

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

DAVID: In this dog-eat-dog reality we now have a degree of free-for-all.

dhw: Thank you. If your God wanted a “degree of free-for-all”, it is not unreasonable to argue that he might even have wanted a total free-for-all.

Don't try to sneak in an evolutionary free-for-all!