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

by David Turell , Saturday, November 16, 2024, 21:16 (5 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: We do not know if God has emotions like us. Since He is not human that thought is doubtful. That he is selfless means His creations are performed without any secondary gains for Him. God needs none. Do you think God requires anything? I don't.

dhw: We do not even know if your God exists, let alone what he thinks and feels. Firstly, you have no idea why he would have inefficiently designed every species and culled 99.9% of them for the sole purpose of creating us. Secondly, you quite rightly observe that “there must be an underlying reason” for your all-purposeful God to have wanted to create us, and at various times you have proposed or agreed to such underlying reasons as enjoyment, interest, escape from boredom, desire for a relationship, recognition and worship. And you have agreed that “all we can say is all or none of them are possible.” Perhaps when you came up with the idea of a “selfless” God, you didn’t realize that you were telling us that although all of them were possible, none of them were possible. Please tell us how you now know your God doesn’t enjoy creating etc., or doesn’t want us to worship him.

I have never removed all of the possibilities you recount. A selfless God who creates without self interests is entirely feasible. The characteristics we apply are human wishes for relationships, not God's. Remember Adler's 50/50 odds re' God's caring for us. Your problem, is applying 100% to every discussion.

A possible free-for-all

DAVID: If my God is omniscient He doesn't need an entertaining unfolding of a new unknown history like your humanized form needs.

dhw: Yet again: The guess that he might have created life and us for his own enjoyment does not denote “need”, and it is perfectly logical to assume that enjoyment would be enhanced by NOT knowing everything in advance. (You agreed that a puppet show would be boring.) Of course this means he is not omniscient. Why do you think your “guess” that he is omniscient is more valid than my guess that he might have wanted the unpredictable free-for-all which fits in logically with all the comings and goings of life’s history? (Though always with the option of dabbling, if he wished.)

DAVID: You must have a humanized God. Why?

dhw: As usual, you refuse to answer my question and substitute one of your own. If by “humanized” you mean God is a human being, I have no doubt that he is not (if he actually exists). If you mean he has thought patterns and emotions in common with ours, I agree with you that he probably (you modified this later to possibly) does have them. The patterns you ascribe to him above, as reasons for his creating us, make perfect sense to me. It makes no sense at all to me that your God should be utterly devoid of any of the thought patterns and emotions which he would have breathed into us. Even your Adler thinks there is a 50/50 chance that your God cares for us. Care, benevolence, love – these are all human thought patterns/emotions. Please tell us why you now think it is impossible for your God to be so “humanized”.

You've skipped over free-for-alls to entertain your God and experimentation to bring surprisingly unexpected results. A God who doesn't know the future and likes it that way.

99.9% v 0.1%

dhw: Please stop contradicting yourself, accept your own agreement, and let's move on.

DAVID: Fine.

dhw: Thank you. I will note this agreement just in case you start contradicting yourself again in a few days’/weeks’ time.

DAVID: Of course the extinct which produced survivors made evolution continuous! That is all I have argued.

dhw: Why are you doing this?. You kept telling us: “The 0.1% survivors are the progeny of the 99.9%”, which means the 99.9% were the parents of the 0.1%, and you kept insisting on continuity, ignoring the fact that the 99.9% which left no survivors (and your God’s apparent creation of our ancestors “de novo”) constituted discontinuity. We had reached agreement. Please stop dragging out.

DAVID: Raup never said your distortion. All He said was 0.1% survived from 99.9% extinctions. stop slicing it up. It is a continuous process.

dhw: What distortion? The extinctions are the “slices”, when most species disappear and the survivors produce new species! According to you, Raup never said the 0.1% survivors were the progeny of the 99.9 species that became extinct, and he never said that the extinction of the 99.9% denoted continuity. These are YOUR distortions. Back to the arguments: Do you now agree or disagree that 1) we are descended from the 0.1% of survivors, that 2) it is the 0.1% of survivors that create continuity, and 3) extinct species which produce no survivors, i.e. come to a dead end, represent discontinuity – as does your theory that your God created our ancestors “de novo” (without precursors) during the Cambrian?

Where did the 0.1% come from if their 99.9% extinctions produced nothing? Your Raup is correct. All he did was to point out the statistics. My interpretation is not yours.