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

by dhw, Tuesday, October 08, 2024, 11:20 (10 days ago) @ David Turell

Contradictions

dhw: […] 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: This is silly. You just described your God as having human desires. Mine doesn't.

When I asked you what you thought your purposeful God’s purposes might be for creating life, including humans, you offered enjoyment of creation and interest in his creations, and for humans perhaps to have a relationship with him, to recognize him and to worship him. This tied in with your agreement that he probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours. This does not make us gods or him human. You now wish to withdraw all your own perfectly reasonable guesses as well as my logical alternatives (which adopt some of those guesses), because they clash with your view that your God is “selfless”.

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.

dhw: 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.[…] . Now please tell us if the quote supports your belief in your God’s selflessness.

DAVID: No. Just one quote!

Haven’t you realized that Jews, Christians and Muslims build and go to synagogues, churches and mosques because they believe their God wants them to worship him? All three books are full of instructions to this effect. But you, who proudly stand alone in the world of theology, tell us God can’t possibly want to be worshipped because he is selfless.

99.9% v 0.1%

DAVID: […] 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.

dhw: 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. […]

DAVID: When did you read Raup? Overall the extinct produced the survivors.

I only know what you told us, as quoted above. Once more: Our extinct ancestors are part of the 99.9% of extinct species. But at each stage, after extinction, it was the 0.1% of survivors who produced the new species. You have agreed that we are descended from the 0.1% survivors, and not from the 99.9% which did not survive. Now please tell us Raup’s theory as to how dead organisms can produce new species.

The free-for-all theory

dhw: 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.” […]

DAVID: Still missing the point: He picked the only system that COULD work!

As usual, you ignore your contradictions, and pretend that I have ignored a theory already dealt with repeatedly. You don’t know that it is the only system that could work. You don’t know that a first-cause, omnipotent, omniscient creator of all things was incapable of creating a Garden of Eden and was forced by circumstances of his own making to design a system which was largely out of his control (evil bugs and cells and disasters and humans). I think it more likely that a first-cause, omnipotent, omniscient God would create the system he wanted to create. A free-for-all, elements of which even you acknowledge, would at a stroke remove the need for you to ridicule his inefficiency and his inability to deal with so-called “mistakes”, which only humans can correct, despite his omnipotence and omniscience!