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

by dhw, Monday, October 21, 2024, 11:55 (31 days ago) @ David Turell

God and possible purposes

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

dhw: As is so often the case, you launch an attack based on your own schizophrenic contradictions.

Please note that the word “reason” is synonymous with “purpose” here. (If you have a purpose for your action, that is the reason why you perform your action.) See later. First, the contradiction:

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

dhw: 1) “Why must he have a reason/purpose?” 2) “Humans were His purpose/reason.”

Clearly you haven’t realized that this is a contradiction. You suggest that he doesn’t need a purpose, and then you tell us what his purpose was!

dhw: If my search for purpose is “humanizing”, why isn’t yours?

No answer.

dhw: 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”.

Contradiction ignored.

dhw: 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.

Ignored.

DAVID: I gave you a logical purpose, but not reasons. Purposes have reasons, but none of the possible ones are as clearly as logical as creating humans.

Your defence is simply to make nonsense of language. As explained above, purpose = the reason for an action.

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.

dhw: 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, you wrote: “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.

dhw: “All or none of them are possible” but this one is impossible, although it’s possible.

Re God’s interest (Oct. 3):

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

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

dhw: 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?

DAVID: Then God can't be bored and is a non issue.

An omniscient God would know exactly what it is to be bored, and would take steps to avoid boredom, e.g. by not designing a puppet show. Hence your comment: “Exactly!”

All of this is in reply to the silly accusation made at at the start of this post. According to you, your God didn’t have to have a purpose or reason for creating life, but all the purposes we have listed are possible, except that mine are impossible. Yours are as “humanizing” as mine, but mine are wrong because they are “humanizing”. In the hope of clarification, I asked if you believed your God was purposeful (see below), but you didn’t answer. Maybe you’ll answer now?

99.9% v 0.1%

DAVID: What I do, and you don't, is consider the past, which is represented by 99.9% extinct producing the present surviving 0.1%.

This is getting more and more ridiculous. I am the one who keeps pointing out that 99.9% of past species and ecosystems had no connection with the present (as you agreed), and you still refuse to acknowledge the utter absurdity of having 99.9% of dead species “producing” (= being the mummies and daddies of) the 0.1% survivors (their supposed “progeny”). 99 different species of dinosaur gave birth to an archaeopteryx!

DAVID: Evolution has a past which becomes the present. Keep it a continuum.

Yet again: only 0.1% of the past leads to the present. The 0.1% is the continuum. The 99.9% were dead ends. How many more times:

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.

Did you really not know that all the creatures that ever lived included those that lived in the past???