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

by dhw, Saturday, October 26, 2024, 09:06 (26 days ago) @ David Turell

God and possible purposes

DAVID: Note: In the new Roget's Thesaurus, 1978 [dhw: new???] under 'purpose' as noun, verb and adjective, 'reason' is never mentioned! To create a purpose one must primarily develop reason/s. Please rethink your incorrect equivalence.

This is pathetic. Oxford definition of purpose: “The reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists”. Encarta: “Purpose: the reason for which anything is done, created or exists.” Collins: “Purpose: the reason for which something is made or done.” There’s no difference between “God’s reason for creating life was to design humans….” And “God’s purpose for creating life was to design humans.” Please stop playing silly language games. Our subject is God and possible purposes.

DAVID: You raise the issue of God's possible boredom. If omniscient, boredom cannot be an issue.

dhw: If he knows everything, then he knows what boredom is, and he knows how to avoid it.

QUOTE: 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: If He knows what is coming He cannot be bored.

So you wouldn’t get bored reading the same book a thousand times. Please explain why you agreed that God would find puppets pretty boring.

Another quote:

DAVID: That God did not want a boring Garden of Eden for us, is a reasonable guess.

It’s equally reasonable to guess that he did not want a boring Eden for himself. He clearly knows all about boredom.

DAVID: It is you who constantly present a God who must experiment, needs entertainment from a free-for-all, a very humanized form of God.

dhw: As usual, you have left out the possible purposes YOU have offered for your God’s creation of life and of humans: enjoyment, interest, a relationship, recognition, worship... I do not present a “must” or a “need”. Enjoyment of creation, and interest in his creations, a love of new discoveries, experiments in order to achieve a particular goal – none of these are more “humanized” or “needy” than your own list of possibilities.

DAVID: Only if they fully exist for Him is He then human.

No idea what this means. Either he wants to be worshipped or he doesn’t, enjoys creating or doesn’t. And nothing on this list will make him human.

DAVID: When we say God loves us we do not know if that is true.

dhw: We do not eVen know if his existence is “true”, let alone the various theories we have about him. But if I say it is possible that God loves us, will you moan and groan that he can’t possibly do so, because love would “humanize” him?

DAVID: You've hit the issue, can God have emotions? Unknown.

Does God exist? Unknown. But you believe he does, had one purpose (us), and might have had various purposes for creating us. And you think they’re all possible (God possibly/probably has thought patterns like ours) except when I agree that they’re all possible, and then you say they are not possible (“God is not human in any way”).

DAVID: When I add He is selfless I mean these creations do not satisfy His own self-gratifications, which do not exist.

dhw: How do you know that all your previous theories were wrong? Do you prefer the possibility of an emotionless zombie to a God who might possibly love us? (Let us remember that your starting point is always what you wish for.)

DAVID: Whether God has emotions or not is unknown. I suspect He does.

How do you know that he has no desire for self-gratification?

99.9% v 0.1%

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

dhw: You wrote: “His study was to explain why extinctions happened as a necessary part of evolution. […] Well-adapted species suddenly were unprepared for new circumstances. The losses cumulatively were 99.9% with 0.1% as survivors.” What is "cumulative" if it's not the losses from all the extinctions? And how in heaven’s name do you come to interpret this as meaning that each survivor was the child of 99 sets of parents from different species?

DAVID: The bold is a nutty interpretation of my thoughts. I go back to mice-like folks with dinosaurs.

Your thoughts were explicit: “The 99.9% produced the surviving 0.1%.” “The 0.1% survivors are the progeny of the 99.9%.” So 696 different species of dinosaur which had no descendants nevertheless gave birth to the “mice-like folks” who survived Chixculub.

DAVID: "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%?

dhw: They were the same species as you! Of course all the mummies and daddies of the same species die, and their children die, and their children’s children die! We are discussing EVOLUTION not genealogy!!!

DAVID: Overall evolutionary statistics for all time. 99.9% extinct produced 0.1% surviving.

Thank you for abandoning your genealogy. No thanks for ignoring your misrepresentation of Raup, and for insisting that for 3.8 billion years, the 0.1% of survivors have each had an average of 99.9 different species of mummies and daddies.