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

by dhw, Friday, November 08, 2024, 08:56 (13 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You have fully ignored my deeper point. Yes reason and purpose can be used as interchangeable words, but not at the level I'm discussing and you are avoiding. God had a reason for his purpose as stated above!!!

dhw: Since you have totally ignored my detailed response, I will start all over again. There have been two questions: 1) what was your God’s purpose for creating life? Your answer: to design humans plus food. 2) What was your God’s purpose for designing humans? We had already discussed 2) at great length, and your response was full of contradictions (see below), but out of the blue you asked: “Why must He have a reason? It is part of your humanizing God?” There followed your absurd insistence that in this context reason and purpose were not synonymous. Now you admit that they are “interchangeable”.

DAVID: What you presented for reason and purpose in the context of the sentences you presented the words were interchangeable. This is semantics! Not the level I am discussing. God must have a background reason for His overt purpose. Here reason and purpose are not the same! I'm asking why did God choose His obvious purpose. Stop your word games.

According to you, his “obvious purpose” was to create us and our food. Your next question was: why (= for what purpose or reason) did God choose to create us and our food? Your various answers have included possible escape from boredom, desire for a relationship with us, recognition, worship...You then asked “why must God have a reason?” after which you told us “There must be an underlying reason”!!! In all cases, the words “reason” and “purpose” are synonymous, so please stop playing silly word games.

dhw: You have also accepted the possibility that your God has thought patterns and emotions like ours, but at the same time you say he is not human in any way and is selfless! The latter beliefs invalidate all of the former, and yet even in the same post you tell us: “All we can say is all or none of them are possible.” You describe this mess as “schizophrenic” but claim that you never contradict yourself.

DAVID: The mess is trying to constructively imagine God. All you do is tell us about your humanized God.

I have just listed YOUR “humanizations” of God, plus YOUR contradictions, which you yourself have labelled "schizophrenic".

DAVID: God's love is a human wish and disturbs me since God is not human. Remember Adler's use of allegorical meanings to solve your problems.
And:
DAVID: I knew exactly what Adler meant! Just as we agreed! We do not know how God views the word 'love'.

dhw: There is no “allegory”. We agreed long ago that the question is not whether God has a different dictionary from ours, but whether he loves us in accordance with what WE mean by “love”.

DAVID: That is how Adler uses allegory.

A strange use of the word, but since we agree that the question is whether he loves us according to what we mean by love, there is nothing to argue about.

99.9% v 0.1%

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.

dhw: In brief, you have accepted Raup’s overall statistics, and clearly you no longer believe that the 0.1% were the progeny of the 99.9% of species that became extinct. The 99.9%
remain irrelevant to your concept of God's purpose. There is nothing left to argue about.

DAVID: The 99.9% created the 0.1%.

dhw: So you really do believe that 99.9 different species were the mummies and daddies of the 0.1 survivors. I guess they do certain things differently in Texas.

DAVID: My analysis of statistical evolution and yours differ.

They don’t differ when you agree that we and our food are descended from the 0.1% of survivors, but they differ when you say that we are descended from the 99.9% that produced no survivors although they were the mummies and daddies of the survivors. Please stop this nonsense.

DAVID: Now to feet elevated.

My thoughts are with you all the way on this subject. I hope all will go well.