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

by David Turell , Saturday, October 19, 2024, 19:37 (3 days ago) @ dhw

God and possible purposes

dhw: As is so often the case, you launch an attack based on your own schizophrenic contradictions. In the following exchange, “reason” is synonymous with purpose.

DAVID: Why must he have a reason. It is part of your humanizing God.

dhw: We do not even “know” if he exists, and so we theorize. Do you or do you not believe that your God is purposeful?

We see humans as an unexpected endpoint of natural evolution. Assuming God as designer then humans were His purpose. We have listed reasons for this, but all we can say is all or none of them are possible. God may have no reason for anything He creates.

April 14 2024
dhw: I’m sure you’ll agree that your God, who you believe is interested in his creations, would find puppets pretty boring.

DAVID: Exactly!

That was THEN This is NOW as thought evolves. We don't know if He is interested in us at all. Adler is 59/50. An omniscient God cannot be bored.

The free-for-all theory and purpose

DAVID: If He is all-powerful then the system we got is the only one that could work.

dhw: Illogical. If he is all-powerful, then as you have agreed, he could have created a life without problems. Omnipotence does not mean having limited powers!

DAVID: I think He is all-powerful and gave us the current system using a cumbersome way to evolve us.

dhw: Not just “cumbersome” but also “inefficient” and as you keep admitting, inexplicable. Which is why you are perfectly happy to propose “humanizing” reasons for his creating life and us, but if you can’t find reasons to support your wacky theories, you argue that your God might be a zombie who has no reasons for doing what he does.

DAVID: All possibilities, but it doesn't give us God's personal reasoning, only what He created.

dhw: Nobody knows God’s personal reasoning, and we extrapolate our theories from what he created (if he exists). Your theories are full of schizophrenic contradictions, ending up with an all-purposeful God who may have no purpose at all.

God's purpose for humans explained above. Stop distorting.

99.9% v 0.1%

DAVID: The 99.9% extinct produced the 0.1% surviving. An overall statistical view. You keep digging into evolutionay branches to distort the overall concept.

dhw: The overall concept is that extinctions resulted in 99.9% losses and 0.1% survivals. How does that come to mean that 99.9% of all species were the mummies and daddies of the 0.1% survivors? Raup would be turning in his grave if he knew you were blaming him for this nonsense.

The individual direct lines are what you are imagining. They all meld into the overall statistics I use. I'm looking from without, you from within.