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

by dhw, Friday, November 22, 2024, 11:27 (5 hours, 29 minutes ago) @ David Turell

God’s possible reasons for creating life and us

DAVID: […] God is not human in any way.

dhw: Stop messing about with language. If your God probably/possibly has thought patterns and emotions like ours (as you believe), and if you believe that all the humanizing reasons YOU offer for his creating life and us are possible, then each of them is a way in which your God is like a human. (A better way of looking at it is that humans are in some ways like God, since he is supposed to have created us.) That does not make your God a human being.

DAVID: I think you've made a good summary. You have simply applied human wishes to God, as I have stated, and whether He has any or all of those attributes is known only to Him.

dhw: Some may be our wishes, but they are all your “humanized” guesses regarding his reasons for creating life and us, so please stop objecting to any “humanization”. Of course nobody knows the truth.

DAVID: You are very touchy about your humanized God. That He must experiment and needs to create entertainment fits no all-powerful. omniscient God I've ever read about.

The above refers to all the “humanized” reasons YOU have given for your God creating life and us. You have now tried to dodge all of these by referring to my three alternative explanations of your God’s use of evolution to achieve his possible purposes. Your own theory is that he designed and then had to cull 99 out of 100 species that were irrelevant to the only purpose you allow him to have, and you ridicule him as being a messy, inefficient designer. I do not suggest that he “must” experiment, or that he “needs entertainment”. I have developed your own suggestion that he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, so he may have experimented either by creating a fascinating free-for-all or by deliberately making new discoveries and getting new ideas as he went along, or - to follow your own theory - he may have had a particular purpose in mind (e.g. to create an organism “in his own image”) and tried out different formulas. In every case, he achieves his purpose by doing what he wants to do. Have you ever heard of an all-powerful, omniscient God who is a messy, inefficient designer, as well as being incapable of designing a system without the evil he tries but in most cases fails to remedy?

DAVID: Please tell us about this form of God you propose. I would like to know how He avoids any evil.

He doesn't! That is the problem of theodicy!!! But if he is omnipotent and omniscient, there is no reason why he should not have created an Eden (a world without evil) if he'd wanted to. I have suggested that both he and we might have found that boring (you agreed that we would be bored, and he would be bored by a puppet show.). Meanwhile, please stop your silly objections to “humanizations”. None of my theories turn your God into an inefficient two-legged mammal, but all of them follow your own humanizations in relation to possible reasons for his creation of us.

99.9% v 0.1%

dhw: Do you now agree with yourself that we are descended not from 99.9% of species that ever lived but from the 0.1% survivors?

DAVID: Of course.

dhw: That should be the end of it.

DAVID: If the 99.9% never existed to produce the 0.1% we wouldn't be here. The 0.1% were produced by something.

Here we go again! The 0.1% survivors were produced by (were the progeny of) their mummies and daddies, who also constituted 0.1% of the species that existed before each extinction. 99.9% went extinct and did not produce survivors. Only 0.1% produced survivors. The survivors are responsible for the continuity of evolution. Species that go extinct without producing survivors represent the discontinuity of evolution. (You also have a theory that your God created our ancestors “de novo”, which adds another example of discontinuity.) We cannot be descended from species that went extinct without leaving any survivors. Therefore, we are descended from the 0.1% that did survive. You agree. Please stop disagreeing.