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

by dhw, Thursday, October 31, 2024, 09:19 (16 hours, 12 minutes ago) @ David Turell

God and possible purposes

dhw: The following quotes and exchanges provide a summary of David’s current beliefs and contradictions:

DAVID: Why must [God] have a reason? It is part of your humanizing God.
But:
DAVID: Assuming God as designer then humans were his purpose.

DAVID: Not a 'but' example. Remember I separate goals/purpose from 'reason', while you do not. I feel one has to develop a reason for a purpose.

Our subject is God’s possible purposes. What is the difference between “God’s only purpose for creating life was to create humans” and “God’s only reason for creating life was to create humans?” Please stop these silly language games.

dhw: Please explain why you agreed that God would find puppets pretty boring.

DAVID: If He knows what is coming He cannot be bored (I've changed my view.)

He would be bored BECAUSE he knows what’s coming! You change your views even within a single post. It’s what we call contradiction.

DAVID: I follow the guideline that God is not human in any way.

dhw: But you also believe that all our “humanizing” proposals, including God’s love for us, are possible, although they are not possible. Hence your self-diagnosed schizophrenia.

DAVID: Not 'not possible'. but we simply do not know and factually cannot support any conclusion.

Agreed, and that applies even to God’s existence. But if you believe it’s possible that God loves us, you are not following the guideline that 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 he has no desire for self-gratification?

DAVID: As God is perfect he does not need self-gratification.

dhw: We are not talking of “need” but of purpose. Your current concept of perfection is a selfless, emotionless being who inefficiently creates millions of species with no purpose except to design us plus food, but with no purpose for designing us plus food, although it is possible that he enjoys creating, is interested in his creations, loves us, is benevolent, and may want recognition and worship...These possibilities are possible but impossible, and you never contradict yourself.[…]

DAVID: You are constantly upset when I protect a God 'not human in any way'. Why must God have any human attributes? What religions describe about God are all human wishes and you support them.

We are discussing the possible purposes of a God whom you have always described as purposeful. You insist that his purpose for creating life was to create us. You can hardly then claim that your purposeful God could not possibly have had any purpose for creating us, and so we theorize on possible purposes. The above are all YOUR “humanized” suggestions, and a few days ago you wrote: “all we can say is all or none of them are possible”. If your God is not human “in any way”, your “humanized” suggestions are all impossible. Nothing to do with religion. Simply you contradicting yourself.

99.9% v 0.1%

DAVID: Page 1 and 2 paraphrased! Only one in a thousand that ever existed are still alive. That is a 99.9% extinction rate. Between five and fifty billion ever lived. That is it. We can assume 0.1% are the survivors to make 100%. All inclusive, no lines of descent!

dhw: Your “paraphrase” neatly omits your misrepresentation of Raup and your absurd theory that one species can be the progeny of 99 sets of parents from different species. The bland generalisation is fine until the last sentence. What is “all inclusive”? How can you possibly have evolution without lines of descent? These lines are formed by the survivors! You are STILL trying to dodge the obvious fact that we are descended, not from the 99.9% of species that became extinct without any descendants, but from the 0.1% of the species that survived. You agreed. That should have been the end of it.

DAVID: The bold is the constant issue. The 99.9% did not just disappear. Going extinct
they actually left living descents, the 0.1% surviving.

You just won’t accept (a) the facts of life, and (b) your own agreement. The 99.9% left nothing. Only the parents (same species) of the 0.1% of survivors left descendants! No species has ever been known to have 99 mummies and daddies from different species! Each successive 0.1% of survivors finally led to us and our food, as you agreed:
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.

In case you don’t understand, this means that we are not descended from the 99.9% but we are descended from the 0.1%. The 0.1% were not the progeny (children) of the 99.9%, which means the 99.9% were not the mummies and daddies of the 0.1%! Only the parents of the survivors were their mummies and daddies, and they were the same species: the 0.1% of the species that survived.