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

by dhw, Monday, October 07, 2024, 11:14 (11 days ago) @ David Turell

Contradictions

dhw: […] 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: Being a humanized God is not the same as a God who 'shares some human-like thoughts and emotions. For example your fellow has to experiment, enjoys watching free-for-alls just like true humans.

This is getting silly. The desire to make new discoveries (through experimentation), to achieve a particular goal (through experimentation), enjoyment of creating and interest in one’s creations are thought patterns which we may have in common with our creator (if he exists). The possibility that we share them does not make us gods, and it does not make him human.

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: […] 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?

DAVID: One tract is not evidence of the overall impression Anderson gives.

The subject is not what Anderson says or doesn’t say. The subject is your insistence that your God is selfless, although you think his reason for creating us might have been his desire for recognition and worship. You thought the Koran supported your view of selflessness. Now please tell us if the quote supports your belief in your God’s selflessness.

99.9% v 0.1%

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: Culling is part of the evolutionary process. Nothing is lost! Raup simply said to achieve today's surviving organisms (0.1%), 99.9% had to go extinct. An overall view you try to apply to each single branch.

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, each one bringing new circumstances. The “cumulative” losses refer to all the extinctions (not “branches”), and nowhere does he say the 99.9% of all lost species PRODUCED the 0.1% of today’s survivors! How can extinct species produce anything??? Raup’s survivors produced the new species after each extinction. You agree that we are descended from the line of 0.1% survivors and not from all the rest. Please stop disagreeing with yourself.

The free-for-all theory

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! (dhw’s bold)

DAVID (under “FREE-FOR-ALL): The biochemistry of life has free-floating proteins in action, free to make mistakes.
And:
DAVID: God makes no mistakes, and does not have wishes. He HAD to use this biochemical system, the ONLY one that could work. Please open your mind to this concept! My view is common in the world of theodical thought.

Listen to yourself: “God had to handle mistakes in evolutionary events, not in the biochemical system of life!!!” “The biochemistry of life has free floating proteins in action, free to make mistakes.” No contradiction? “Of course he wished it [the system].” “God…does not have wishes.” You have convinced yourself that your God was incapable of designing a Garden of Eden, although he is omnipotent, and you refuse to even consider the possibility that being the omnipotent first cause of all things, he is more likely to have designed what he wished to design rather than what he was forced to design.