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

by dhw, Sunday, November 17, 2024, 11:41 (4 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] 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.

DAVID: I have never removed all of the possibilities you recount.

Then why do you keep moaning about “humanizing”? They are all “humanizations” of yours which I also regard as feasible.

DAVID: A selfless God who creates without self interests is entirely feasible.
And later:
DAVID: You must have a “humanized” God. Why?

Then let’s go back to the original question: why do you think your all-purposeful God wanted to create life and, in particular, humans? You have said there must be a reason. What's wrong with the reasons you have offered?

DAVID: 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.

God’s caring for us is a human wish, but it is also a “humanization”, as are love and benevolence. God designing us because he wants us to worship him is not a human wish, but is a human explanation for God wanting to design us. This is no more and no less a “humanization” than God caring for us. Thank you, however, for now agreeing that you do NOT reject these possibilities. Perhaps you will now also agree that a selfless God would not enjoy creating and would not want to be worshipped. Your 100% possible conflicts with your 100% impossible. Hence you constant self-contradictions or “schizophrenia”.

DAVID: 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.

I offered you three possible explanations for your God’s use of evolution as alternatives to your illogical theory that he designed and then had to cull 99% of species that were irrelevant to the one and only purpose you allow him (us and our food). Two of them were linked to your own belief in his "humanized" enjoyment and interest: 1) a free-for-all, in which he creates a mechanism that will provide almost endless variations that come and go, as we observe throughout the history of evolution. You agreed, a puppet show would be boring, and unpredictability is far more interesting. 2) Experimentation for the same purpose: new discoveries. You’ve summed it up neatly: he doesn’t know the future and likes it that way. However, this could also lead to him having new ideas as he goes along, and one of these later ideas might be to create a being “in his own image”. Hence the lateness of our arrival. This ties in with 3) experimentation in order to achieve a specific goal (e.g. us). And so he tries out different forms, all of which are highly successful in their own right but which he feels he can still “improve on”. You are correct: he is not omniscient. Nor is he messy, cumbersome and inefficient. In all three, he does precisely what he wants to do.

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. [But you continue to do so!]

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

Yes, my Raup is correct, and you are the one who has distorted his statistics. 1) The 0.1 survivors represent the continuity. The 99.9% that did not produce survivors represent the discontinuity, as does your Cambrian theory of our “de novo” ancestry. 2) The 0.1% of species that survived each extinction came from their own mummies and daddies. There is no creature on earth that is known to have been the “progeny” of 99 sets of parents from completely different species. Species that come to a dead end do not produce survivors. In each new phase (after extinctions) the surviving species produce new species, presumably because new conditions in different parts of the world require or allow for new adaptations and innovations. Eventually, after all the different “slices” of evolution, humans emerged from the 0.1% of survivors, not from the 99.9% that produced no survivors. You agree. You said “fine”. How many more times are you going to disagree with yourself?