New Miscellany 1: evolution, eco,insects, atheism, future (General)

by dhw, Saturday, May 24, 2025, 08:23 (7 hours, 47 minutes ago) @ David Turell

Evolution and “culling”

DAVID: More nonsense. How many Model-T Fords can you find!

dhw: You have missed the point. Your version of God designed and culled 99.9% of species which were NOT the ancestors of his sole purpose: us plus our food. If Henry Ford is your equivalent, he would have invented and “culled” 99.9 non-motor-car machines in order to be able to invent his motor car, which is the ancestor of all modern Fords.

DAVID: You are off point. Comparing living evolution to automotive evolution is quite comparable allegorically. We could compare TV, refrigeration and many other mechanical advances that truly evolve.

A TV is a totally different “species” from a Ford motor car. It may undergo changes and improvements, but your early TV is the ancestor of your modern TV. It is the same “species”. Your God, however, wants to design an “allegorical” motor car, and so he designs “allegorical” TVs, fridges, computers, fountain pens, washing machines, tumble dryers etc., and then gets rid of them because they have no connection with the motor car, which is all he wants to design. We and our food are descended from the 0.1% of survivors. Remember? The modern Ford is descended from early Fords. Not from early refrigerators!

DAVID: Off you go again with your very distorted view of God-driven evolution. All
evolutionary processes require culling. End of discussion.

My response above should end this discussion, as you simply refuse to acknowledge that your God designs and culls the species that are not our ancestors. Henry Ford did not design and cull TVs and fridges in order to design his motor car, which is the direct ancestor of all modern Fords.

DAVID: God is not human and does not develop new ideas.His goals are clear to him.

dhw: A God who gets new ideas is no more human than a God who starts out with a specific purpose. His goals will certainly be clear to him, but that does not mean he has only one goal, which is to produce us plus food, and therefore messily and inefficiently produces 99.9 out of 100 species that have no connection with his single goal.

You juggled the section around, and did not respond to this.

Animal minds: Insect tool use

DAVID: I have accepted probable intelligence but with conformation by testing.

So do you agree that your alternatives to intelligence are a) a 3.8-billion-year-old programme or b) divine lessons for insect use of resin? And do you believe that your God could have designed insect use of resin as essential for humans and our survival?

Atheism

DAVID: Your 'act' of defending God is a shallow facade.

dhw: Please stop dodging the absurdity of your own theistic theory and the logic of my alternative theistic theories by pretending that my agnosticism somehow invalidates my arguments.

DAVID: Sorry, but I find your God-imitations quite weak. Remember I find you humanizing God.

You have contradicted yourself over and over again on the subject of “humanizing” God, since you have endowed him with just as many human thought patterns and emotions as I have. Why do you think a God who creates a free-for-all, or experiments, or gets new ideas is “weaker” than a messy, cumbersome, inefficient God who knowingly designs and then has to cull 99.9% of organisms irrelevant to his one and only purpose? (We could also mention theodicy, and the weakness of your all-powerful God who has no control over the baddies he has inadvertently created.)

End of evolution?

DAVID: Do you see any speciation? Evolution is over.
And:
DAVID: What 'new conditions' do you imagine? I see none.

dhw: Possible changes to the sun, massive objects smashing into the Earth, human activities (uncontrolled climate change, nuclear warfare etc.) rendering the planet uninhabitable by humans, but habitable by other organisms that can cope. Do you really believe that in a million years’ time the Earth and its inhabitants will be the same as we have now?[/b]

DAVID: Possibilities.

dhw: You could not see any possible new conditions. Now you can see possible new conditions. Please answer my now bolded question.

DAVID: That we adapt so beautifully to climate/environmental extreme conditions now (see Tibet article today) means we will not speciate under new conditions. Adapt, yes.

We are not talking about humans speciating!!! If evolution is over, there will be no new species of any kind! You could not imagine conditions in which new species might arise. I gave you examples. I then asked you the bolded question, which you have dodged as usual…