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

by dhw, Monday, November 18, 2024, 10:51 (3 days ago) @ David Turell

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

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

DAVID: I repeat: they are all human wishes for a relationship with God. We are humanizing Him!

You have agreed that your purposeful God must have had a reason for wanting to create life and us. I asked you what you thought that reason might be, and over time you have suggested or agreed on enjoyment and interest, relief from boredom, desire for a relationship, recognition, worship. Whether these are your wishes or not is totally irrelevant. They remain possible reasons. As regards “humanizing”, these reasons do not turn him into a human being; they are simply thought patterns and emotions like ours, and you have agreed that he probably - later possibly – has such thought patterns and emotions, and a few days ago, you said you had “never removed all of the possibilities you recount” (see above), and “all we can say is all or none of them are possible.” If you agree that they are all possible, stop trying to reject them as “human wishes” and “humanizations”.

dhw: 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 your constant self-contradictions or “schizophrenia”.

DAVID: I agree with the bolded. God's creations are emotionless for Him and God does not need to be worshipped.

How do you know that the God who you think probably/possibly has thought patterns and emotions like ours does not have thought patterns and emotions like ours, and the God you think might possibly have created us because he wanted to be worshipped could not possibly have created us because he might have wanted to be worshipped? You even accept Adler’s 50/50 regarding your God’s caring for us. Do you not realize that caring, benevolence, love are also human thought patterns and emotions? So how can your God be “emotionless” towards his creations if it’s 50/50 that he has emotions towards his creations? Stop contradicting yourself!

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 shan’t repeat my three alternative theistic explanations for the course of evolution, summarized yesterday. All of them logically explain the comings and goings of evolution’s history, with your God doing precisely what he wants to do, as opposed to your own theory, which denigrates him as being imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient. Your summary above is accurate, although I don’t like the superficiality of “entertain”. I prefer your own terms of “enjoy” and “interest”.

DAVID: I have constantly pointed out God is omniscient, knows the future, needs no experimentation and needs no entertainment.

Pointed out? How do you know? And what makes you so certain that your God is messy, cumbersome and inefficient?

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.

dhw: Yes, my Raup is correct, and you are the one who has distorted his statistics.

DAVID: We will always disagree about Raup. I view it as 99.9% went extinct to produce 0.1% surviving.

The disagreements are not about Raup (though I'm reluctant to be quite so precise about the percentages), but about the statements you make which have nothing to do with Raup. 1) you have agreed and then disagreed that evolution’s continuity is created by Raup’s 0.1% survivors, whereas its discontinuity consists in the 99.9% that produced no survivors, as well as in your own theory that your God created our ancestors “de novo”. 2) You have stated that by “produce” you meant that the 0.1% were the progeny of the 99.9%. That is blatantly absurd. No life form has 99 sets of parents from different species, let alone parents that produced no survivors!!! You have agreed that we are descended from the 0.1% survivors and not the 99.9% that went extinct without producing any survivors. That should be the end of the discussion.