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

by David Turell , Thursday, October 24, 2024, 17:18 (28 days ago) @ dhw

God and possible purposes

DAVID: You have the same complaints. We cannot know God's reasons for creating us. It must be considered He had none at all. It is clear the God you devise needs entertainment and experimentation. It is repeated over and over.

dhw: You wrote: “Assuming God as designer then humans were His purpose.” You cannot know that, but it is utterly absurd to argue that he designed life for the sole purpose of creating us and our food but may have had no purpose for designing us and our food! When asked what that purpose might be, YOU suggested enjoyment, interest, desire for a relationship, recognition and worship as possible reasons. All perfectly plausible and consistent with your belief that he probably/possibly has thought patterns and emotions like ours. I added escape from boredom - you agreed that he would not have wanted a puppet show - a free-for-all, as being far more interesting, and experimentation for new discoveries or to achieve a specific purpose (e.g. a being in his own image = us).

As Adler used the appearance of humans as a proof of God, it is easy for me to invert the argument and say humans were God's purpose as a logical conclusion. You raise the issue of God's possible boredom. If omniscient, boredom cannot be an issue. It is you who constantly present a God who must experiment, needs entertainment from a free-for-all, a very humanized form of God.

DAVID: A selfless God is a very possible God. I am searching possibilities. God may not need reasons for His creations. Only humans look for reasons. He is certainly not human.

dhw: Having thought patterns like ours does not make him human. We are both searching for possibilities, which = possible reasons, and of course we humans are looking for reasons. If your God had no reason for creating life and has no self, you are presenting him as a mindless zombie who churns out designs for no reason at all. Even more derogatory than your dismissal of his designing skills as “messy, cumbersome and inefficient”. You have also told us, concerning our various possibilities, “”all we can say is all or none of them are possible.” If they are all possible, then stop dismissing your own plausible proposals and mine because they are “humanizing” and you would now prefer to turn him into a selfless zombie.

DAVID: As i search the possibilities some while contradict each other. You don't search at all.

dhw: If I don’t search, why do you constantly dismiss my list of possibilities (which include some of your own) as “humanizing”?

Don't combine our thoughts about a singular God. We are vastly different in our pictures of God. As above: " It is you who constantly present a God who must experiment, needs entertainment from a free-for-all, a very humanized form of God." At a start we know God is not human in any way. We may mimic His thought patterns. When we say God loves us we do not know if that is true. The counter thought is if He created us why wouldn't He love us. With His creation of the universe and us we must consider Him purposeful. When I add He is selfless I mean these creations do not satisfy His own self-gratifications, which do not exist.

99.9% v 0.1%

DAVID: Same tired argument 99% of extinct organisms produced nothing at all. 99.9% produced the living 0.1% surviving. That makes 100% doesn't it?

dhw: In each phase of evolution, organisms produced new species, but they ceased to produce new species when they went extinct. Only 0.1% of species survived. The 0.1% of survivors were not the descendants of the 99.9%, because none of them had 99 different species as their mummies and daddies. You can’t understand this, and so I have given you an example: 696 dinosaur species went extinct. They left no descendants. Only four dinosaur species (the avians) left descendants, and they have now multipled into thousands of species of birds.

DAVID: Same nonsense on your part. We are not discussing lines of descent but an overall set of statistics about evolution and extinction. Raup said 99.9% went extinct to produce the surviving 0.1%! And you jump into dinosaurs and their bird offspring. A tiny sliver of overall evolution. Concentrate on 'overall'.

dhw: You are playing with the word “produce”, which you defined as the 0.1% being the progeny (= children) of the 99.9% percent. I have no doubt that Raup would have known the facts of parenthood, as above. His overall statistics, according to your description of his theory, were 99.9% losses and 0.1% survivors from each extinction.

NOT each extinction! An overall view of all of evolution is Raup's statement in his book.

dhw: The dinosaurs are my example, as you seem to be unable to understand the process which led you to agree that we are NOT descended “from 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived”, but only “from 0.1% surviving”.

"Direct" descent is those living now as existing organisms. That is why I agree I am from 0.1% surviving. But I can trace my ancestors back to 1750 AD in Serpic, Poland. Under your terms aren't they part of the 99.9%?