Return to David's theory of evolution, theodicy and purposes (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, October 20, 2024, 11:25 (32 days ago) @ David Turell

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?

DAVID: We see humans as an unexpected endpoint of natural evolution. Assuming God as designer then humans were His purpose.

1) “Why must he have a reason/purpose?” 2) “Humans were His purpose/reason.” No contradiction? If my search for purpose is “humanizing”, why isn’t yours? As for “humanizing”, at one moment your God probably or possibly has human-like thought patterns , and the next he is not human “in any way”. As for “expecting”, if bacteria were found on another planet, would you also expect to find elephants and sharks, ants and eagles? Not to mention fossils of dinosaurs and all the other extinct species for which your God didn’t need to have a purpose although he had a purpose.

DAVID (re God’s possible purposes for creating humans): We have listed reasons for this, but all we can say is all or none of them are possible.

Thank you for agreeing that they’re all possible. That includes all your “humanizing” reasons (e.g. enjoyment, interest, desire for a relationship, recognition and worship) as well as mine (also enjoyment and interest, plus a free-for-all to enhance enjoyment and interest, plus experimentation for a particular goal or to make new discoveries). But back you go:

DAVID: God may have no reason for anything He creates.

I asked: “Do you or do you not believe your God is purposeful?” Please answer. And let’s not forget that your starting point is what you wish to believe, and this colours all your responses and countless contradictions. Here are two more purposes for a God who may have no purpose. Re the vastness of the universe: “I assume it is all purposeful.” And God’s purpose for creating a free-for-all might be to avoid getting bored:

April 14 2024 ( quoted several times since):
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!

DAVID: 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.

“All or none of them are possible” but this one is impossible, although it's possible. Your thoughts somersault at bewildering speed. Re “interest”, an exchange from Oct. 3 on this thread:

dhw: Why do you think (your God) is still interested enough to keep watching?

DAVID: Don’t you maintain interest in your creations?

Yes indeed – it’s a thought pattern we may share with your God. An omniscient God would know every detail in advance, so what would be the point in him watching what he already knows?

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.

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

God may have no purpose, but you have explained his purpose. And you never contradict yourself.

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.

DAVID: 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.

Looked at from without, the statistics are simply 99.9% losses, and 0.1% survivals (Raup). You have invented the astonishing statistic that “The 99.9% extinct produced the 0.1% surviving”, i.e. the 0.1% were the “progeny” or children of the 99.9%. If you are tracing ancestry, you cannot avoid “direct lines”, which is why you agree that the current 0.1% are descended from the 0.1% of survivors, and not from the 99.9%.