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

by David Turell , Tuesday, November 19, 2024, 16:03 (1 day, 18 hours, 0 min. ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I have characterized them reasonably as human wishes, which is not a rejection of them, but a labelling of them.

dhw: I don’t know why we should wish that God enjoys creating and wants us to worship him, but whether they are human wishes or not, you have offered them as possible reasons for your God’s creation of life and us, and they are all “humanizations”.

I understand that and it has to be balanced knowing that God is not human in any way.

DAVID: We are in a one-sided position, trying to imagine an enormous intellect that created us and what that personage might wish from us in return if anything at all. God may wish nothing as Adler has commented. All guesses apply.

dhw: Thank you. All guesses apply, including your own humanizations. So why do you continue to argue about them? Your next comment gives us the answer.

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.

dhw: Instead of your earlier statement that you have NOT rejected your own humanizations, and all our guesses are possible, you now inform us authoritatively that your God is emotionless, selfless, and does not “need” (replacing “want”) to be worshipped. It is your constant agreement (all possible) and disagreement (not possible) that result in your endless contradictions, which you acknowledge as “schizophrenic” and then deny.

DAVID: I'm not contradicting myself. You jump upon any commentary as 100% true. I am searching for a reasonable personal picture of a God who created us, knowing that God is a personage like no other person.

dhw: That is precisely what we are both doing. You have offered several perfectly reasonable “humanizations” of your God to explain why he might have created life and us, you say you don’t reject them, but then you dismiss them as “humanizations” although you agree that your God probably/possibly has thought patterns and emotions like ours. You also reject my alternative theistic explanations of evolution’s constant comings and goings: a free-for-all or the result of experimentation. Why? Your answer:

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

dhw: Pointed out? How do you know?

DAVID: It is how I imagine our God.

dhw: And what makes you so certain that your God is messy, cumbersome and inefficient?

DAVID: He used an indirect cumbersome form of evolutionary creation.

dhw: You’ve left out “inefficient”, but you don’t find it surprising than an omnipotent, omniscient God should be so inefficient. You have simply formed your theories, ignore all their illogicalities, and close your mind to any alternatives.

You always forget God chooses for His own unknown reasons. Our imperfect view of evolution may be totally wrong for reasons God only knows.

99.9% v 0.1%

dhw: Do you now agree with yourself that we are descended, not from 99% of species that ever lived but from the 0.1% survivors.

DAVID: Of course.

But back you go to the most astonishing theory of all:

DAVID: One last time. The 0.1% surviving came from the 99.9% extinct who went extinct producing the 0.1% surviving. Overall statistics.

dhw: Please remember your statement: “The 0.1% are the progeny of the 99.9%.” So now you have 99.9% of species actually dying as they gave birth to 0.1% of species.” I doubt if this revolutionary interpretation of the facts of life, let alone the history of evolution, will ever catch on.

Your inability to picture evolution as Raup did is the problem. Just a pure statistical view: 99.9% extinctions resulted in 0.1% survivors. Forget mummies and daddies.