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

by dhw, Sunday, October 06, 2024, 09:21 (12 days ago) @ David Turell

Contradictions

DAVID: Your complaints come from your insistence upon a very human form of God.

dhw: I complain because you keep contradicting yourself […] even to the point of ridiculing your perfect designer as imperfect and inefficient. I offer alternative theistic explanations of evolution which show your God to be efficiently creating what he wants to create. Why is that more human than your inefficient God?

You have not answered. You have misrepresented the reason for my complaints, which is your numerous contradictions. You reject my theistic alternatives because they “humanize” God – an objection which you yourself have demolished by agreeing that one does not have to be a human being in order to share human-like thought patterns and emotions.

DAVID: Karen Anderson's book describes an OT God as angry, the NT God as loving, and the Koran God as creating 'works' in describing how human thought about God developed. That sounds like a selfless God to me in the Koran. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: It would seem that Karen Anderson is aware that nobody knows the truth, so why are you quoting her? Does she mention the fact that all three books present a God who demands to be worshipped[…] and a God who demands to be worshipped can hardly be called selfless?

DAVID: Anderson, of whom you know nothing about, is a retired nun. Her book is history of how humans have matured in defining God. No mention of God's demands. I see a selfless God in her book.

She apparently distinguishes between three versions of your God. An angry God is hardly selfless, a loving God is what you wish for but your Adler says there’s only a 50/50 chance, and you think the Koran offers the selfless one. Here is a quote from the Koran: ”Verily I am God ; there is no God beside me; wherefore worship me, and perform thy prayer is remembrance of me.” (Chapter 20, The Chandos Classics edition). Does this sound like a “selfless” God?

99.9% v 0.1%

DAVID:[…] Yes, we are among the survivors who came from extinct ancestors. You accept evolution as a continuum. Then you create breaks in it. The old brings the now!! That is my position in using Raup's statistics.

Once more: The extinct died, leaving 0.1% of survivors. Those survivors produced the new living forms of the next stage. Extinct organisms cannot produce anything! The next extinction destroyed 99.9% of the then existing forms, and again the 0.1% of survivors went on to create the new living forms. Raup’s statistics are based on plural extinctions, and the continuity is provided by the survivors of each stage. Example: 99.43% of dinosaurs left no descendants, but 0.57% survived and went on to produce thousands of species of birds. It is only the surviving 0.1% of the old that produce the new. I quote:
dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From 0.1% surviving.

dhw: Why were you insane when you agreed?

DAVID: The insanity is tossing out the 99.9%, from whom the 0.1% descended. We are among the 0.1%.

You said your God “had to cull” the 99.9% that were not relevant to his purpose, and you agree that our current 0.1% are NOT directly descended from the 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived, but only from the 0.1% of creatures that survived each extinction. The only “insanity” here is your “schizophrenic” self-contradiction (your own diagnosis).

The free-for-all theory

DAVID: Yes, the dog-eat-dog interpretation implies a living free-for-all. There are no mistakes in God's design. You still don't understand: God made the only working system of life that can work. Please finally respond to that concept you've ignored. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: You have told us repeatedly that there had to be mistakes in the design, which your God even tried to correct. I do not ignore your theory […]. I simply regard it as incompatible with the theory that he is omnipotent, and so I propose instead that (if he exists) he created the system he wished to create. You agree that life’s history is “a living free-for-all”, in which case what you call “mistakes” are simply the result of organisms designing their own means of survival.

DAVID: The bold is totally incorrect. I said God had to handle mistakes in evolutionary events, NOT in the biochemical system of life!!! God chose a living system that could work comparable with His omnipotence. THE ONLY SYSTEM. No other can be created!!! Of course He wished it!

DAVID (under “FREE-FOR-ALL): The biochemistry of life has free-floating proteins in action, free to make mistakes.

“There are no mistakes in God’s design”, or in the biochemical system of life, but the biochemical system of life that God designed has essential components which are free to make mistakes! And your first-cause omnipotent God “chose a living system”, but he had no choice because this was the only system he could possibly use, so he wished for a system which compelled him to make mistakes! No wonder you stand alone in the world of theology. (Continued under "More Miscellany! - "free-for-all".)