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

by dhw, Friday, October 04, 2024, 12:11 (14 days ago) @ David Turell

Contradictions

DAVID: We do not know how God feels about Himself, and He likely has no feelings. Back to Adler's 50/50.

dhw: Adler’s 50/50 does not mean he likely has no feelings; it means he may or may not have them. And in any case you’ve told us this applied only to whether your God cares for us. According to you, he is “benevolent”, which = 100% he cares for us. Now please explain why it is illogical to assume that if God is interested in his creations (as you say he is), he might have created them because he wanted to create something that would interest him, and if he may like us to worship him (as you say he may), he might have created us because he wanted us to worship him. And do you agree that these possible motives are not selfless?

DAVID: Stop assuming my guesses about God are 100% fact or true as you constantly proclaim. God is selfless and whether He wishes these relationships or not is unknown. They remain as human wishes.

I make no such assumption. Nothing is “known”. And that applies to your theory that God exists and is “selfless”. You also theorize that your God is interested in us and may want us to worship him. But you then refuse to accept that IF these theories are correct, your theory of “selfnessness” must be incorrect. Stop assuming that your guess about God’s “selflessness” is “100% fact or true as you constantly proclaim”. And by extension, stop assuming that your God could not possibly have created life because he wanted to create something he would find interesting, and he could not possibly have created humans because he wanted recognition and our worship, although these are perfectly logical theories which you yourself have proposed.

99.9% v 0.1%

DAVID: Stop slicing evolution into separate stages: the present survivors came from the extinct past stages. (dhw's bold)

dhw: I must stop slicing evolution into stages, but the present survivors came from past stages, and you never contradict yourself!

I then described how evolution works.

DAVID: You described perfectly how evolution works. It is a continuum. I still contend the 0.1% existent today all came from the 99.9% now extinct as you describe.

dhw: What I have described “perfectly” is the exact opposite of the 0.1% being descended from the 99.9% extinct,

DAVID: Did the 99.9% produce the 0.1% or not? If not what produced the 99.9%.

So here we go again: Each stage has its own 100%. Each extinction removes 99.9%. The next stage is created by the 0.1% of survivors (though we should allow for minor fluctuations in the percentages. Raup’s figure is an average.) Extinct organisms cannot produce anything. The survivors then produce the next 100%, and the next extinction removes 99.9%. We and our contemporaries did not descend from the 99.9% but from the (approximate) 0.1% survivors, i.e. those survivors are what produced the current (though dwindling) 100%, AS YOU AGREED, though inexplicably you now call your agreement insane.

The free-for-all theory

dhw: In your eyes, your perfect God’s use of evolution is imperfect, messy and inefficient, and despite his omnipotence he is incapable of inventing a system of life without mistakes which he tries in vain to correct, but he hopes that we will help him out. And for good measure, he also designed bugs that can outsmart him. Does all this make sense?

DAVID: Certainly does in a working system that allowed freedom as action as it must.

So it makes sense that an omnipotent, omniscient God is inefficient, unable to correct the mistakes in his design, relies on humans for help, and designs bugs that are cleverer than him. But yes indeed, the comings and goings of evolution, the so-called mistakes, and the victory of “bad” bugs over “good” bugs all make sense if your God deliberately gave all forms of life the autonomous means of designing their own methods of survival. That means a free-for-all.

DAVID: (under "theodicy") Understand if a system won't work it won't work no matter how omnificent or all-powerful one is. We are given what works.

Your God is not given anything. You keep forgetting that he is your “first cause” and created everything from scratch. So your omnipotent God was incapable of designing A Garden of Eden. And it's not possible that what he created was what he wished to create: for example, a free-for-all.