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

by dhw, Tuesday, May 27, 2025, 11:32 (6 days ago) @ David Turell

Evolution and “culling”

DAVID: God is faith not rationality! You only want proofs that do not exist.

dhw: As usual, you fall back on the question of God’s existence, which is not the issue here. You have irrational faith in the theory that your God is an inefficient designer, whose sole purpose was humans etc. [...]. When will you stop dodging?

DAVID: How can I dodge when I am following Adler's teachings who used our appearance through evolution as his proof of God. Your whole distortion of evolution is a dodge.

Yet again, you fall back on proof of your God’s existence, which is not the subject here. As you know perfectly well, the subject is your interpretation of evolution, so in order not to dodge, would you please once and for all explain to me why your all-powerful, all-knowing, first-cause God deliberately and knowingly created and had to cull 99.9 species out of 100 that were irrelevant to what you believe was his one and only purpose of creating us plus our food, even though you believe he had the power to create any species he liked “de novo”.

DAVID (under Animal minds: Insect tool use): Same distortion. Evolution culls!!!

There is no distortion. The process of evolution has resulted in 99.9% extinction, which you can call “culling” if you like. But if your God is first cause, he invented the process of evolution, and it is he who decided that species should be culled. But according to you, he designed them, and then he culled them because they were irrelevant to his purpose of creeating us plus food. Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God invent what you yourself call a messy, cumbersome, inefficient means of achieving the goal you impose on him? Hence my request above: please explain it.

Atheism

DAVID: I prefer my version of God over yours neither of which is "TRUE". You want exactitude and never dare dip your toe in faith. The chasm is too big for you.

dhw: Nobody knows the truth. As an agnostic, I recognize that we cannot have exactitude, but we can at least offer theories. You have faith in your own theory, that your God is a messy, inefficient designer. I point out that there are other theistic theories which fit in logically with the history of life but do not ridicule your God. Your only argument seems to be that I ought to have faith in your theory.

DAVID: You don't have to accept my God. I just don't like any you have invented.

Of course. You simply have faith in a theory which makes no sense, and pretend that my objections are somehow invalidated by my agnosticism. And yet you can’t find any logical objection to my alternative theistic theories other than the fact they entail thought patterns and emotions like ours, although you accept that he probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours.

End of evolution?

dhw: […] your guess is that in a million […] years’ time. everything will be the same as now. Except for a few minor changes to us humans. […]

DAVID: From what we see now, that is the future presuming the Earth survives all possible damages.

dhw: You think that in a million years’ time, everything on Planet Earth will be the same - providing nothing changes! Not much of an argument, is it? And you asked: “What ‘new conditions’ do you imagine? I see none.” And because you see none, you can state with certainty that evolution is over, although it may not be over if conditions change!

DAVID: We've only been here 315,000 years with enormous civilized developments. What we develop is what will change in the future. The conditions of the Earth seem stabilized. Do you think there will be super humans?

It’s perfectly possible that there will be no humans at all. If, as you claim, evolution is over, that means there will be no more new species. You were unable to imagine any future changes to the planet, and I gave you a list, each item of which could result in the extinction of current species (including humans) and the birth of new species – which is precisely what has happened throughout the course of life’s history so far. That doesn’t mean the new species will be superhumans! They might be very simple forms of life. The only deciding factor will be their ability to survive in the new conditions.