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

by dhw, Wednesday, October 02, 2024, 11:43 (50 days ago) @ David Turell

Contradictions

DAVID: Can a selfless God 'want' worship? He may like it, but does not need it to satisfy Himself. Can you see the difference?

dhw: Stop dodging. The question was why you thought your God might have created life and us. One possible reason you gave for our creation was that he might want us to recognize his work and worship him. We’re not talking of need. If he wants to be worshipped, you can hardly call him selfless.

DAVID: Complaints based on my old guesses. Stay in current time.

Tomorrow, current time will be past time. I find your past guesses perfectly feasible, and even now you have just proposed that your God is still watching us with interest, and that he may like worship (“but doesn’t need it”). Neither of these indicates selflessness. You continue to contradict yourself.

99.9% v 0.1%

The exact exchange:

dhw: You continue to ignore your 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.[/i]

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

dhw: I pointed out that the mammals of dinosaur times were among the 0.1% SURVIVORS (from the dinosaur extinction). Once a species is extinct, how can it possibly produce anything??? You agreed existing species did not come “from the 99.9% now extinct” but from the 0.1% survivors, but now you say existing species came from the 99.9% extinct. Why was your initial agreement insane?

DAVID: Stop slicing evolution into separate stages: the present survivors came from the extinct past stages.

I must stop slicing evolution into stages, but the present survivors came from past stages, and you never contradict yourself! Once more: each past stage rendered 99.9% extinct and only 0.1% survived. The 0.1% then produced the new species until the next “stage”, when the process was repeated. At every stage, the new species were produced by the surviving 0.1% and not by the 99.9% that had not survived. Once a species is extinct, it cannot produce anything! You have agreed that we and our food are descended from the 0.1% survivors, not from the 99.9% that did not survive, so why do you find your own agreement insane?

Under “Theodicy” but now switched to the feasibility of the “free-for-all” theory, which would provide us with a possible explanation for God’s creation of evil.)

dhw: You have just agreed that your God gave life forms freedom of action, and the dog-eat-dog reality (the battle for survival) = a degree of free-for-all. The latter is the key to evolution, since every evolutionary development in some way enhances each form’s ability to survive. If your God deliberately created what you call this dog-eat-dog reality as a free-for-all, it is not unreasonable to suggest that he might have designed the mechanisms by which each life form is free to design its own “novelties” – instead of your God preprogramming each one 3.8 billion years ago, or popping in for a dabble whenever conditions allow (or whenever he decides to pop in and change conditions).

DAVID: Now sneaking in Shapiro's theory of cell directed evolution. I'll stick with God as designer.

dhw: Repetition of your wishes is not an answer to the points I have made. In any case, if God exists, he would have designed the mechanisms that created the free-for-all.

DAVID: Of course.

So you can now have a designer God whose use of evolution makes sense.

Theodicy: a philosopher leaps

DAVID: this essay is the closest as to how I feel about God and faith. My bolds show this. God is limited in options that work, not in power, is my one disagreement.

90% of this brilliant essay chimes in with my own views of a possible God, though I find it just a little surprising that Philip Goff has decided to leap into Christianity. This is perhaps due to what I see as a very inadequate presentation of the case for atheism.

Goff: In terms of the case for atheism, I remain as convinced as ever that the suffering we find in the universe is powerful evidence against the existence of a loving and all-powerful God.

Atheism is not based on theodicy! If it was, then Professor Goff has supplied a perfectly adequate response: God may exist but may not be loving and all-powerful! Dawkins repeatedly asks the unanswerable question: the argument for design “raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who designed the designer?” The philosophical mantra “first cause” is meaningless, since the atheist’s first cause will be mindless energy and matter eventually chancing to hit on the right formula to produce primitive, evolvable life. If the complexities of life and consciousness indicate design, how can an eternal, vastly more intelligent conscious mind simply exist without any source? (We agnostics regard both hypotheses as equally improbable, and we do not take a leap. We simply acknowledge the fact that we don’t know the truth.) Your own comment is a contradiction in itself: if God created the universe but was limited in his options, then clearly he cannot be all-powerful.