New Miscellany 1: David's theory of evolution, ecosystems (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 04, 2025, 09:19 (1 day, 20 hours, 49 min. ago) @ David Turell

Evolution and “culling”

DAVID: The bold is your psychoanalysis of me without evidence. I accept what history tells us God did. I have analyzed from those events what I think is God's purpose. Our magnificent brain, the most unusual item in the universe, defines His goal. My criticism of His method notwithstanding.

dhw: Again assuming that God exists, you have admitted that you have no idea why he would have chosen the method you impose on him in order to fulfil the purpose you impose on him. Your confession is my “evidence”! Even your magnificent brain can make no sense of your theory unless you ridicule your supposedly omnipotent, omniscient God as being messy and inefficient, which is a contradiction in itself.

DAVID: You conflate constantly. God uses a messy mechanism but remains all potent, all omniscient, etc.

There is no messy mechanism in your version of evolution, unless it’s your God’s mind. You have him individually and deliberately designing every species and then “culling” the 99.9% of his designs because they are irrelevant to his one and only purpose. And yet you also have him perfectly capable of designing whatever species he wants “de novo”. So why didn’t he? You have no idea. “God didn’t tell you!” Of course he didn’t. And he didn’t tell you that he designed every species, or that his one and only purpose was us, or that he regards himself as an inefficient designer. Your theory makes no sense, but you start out with what you wish, and “the rest follows”, the rest being the mess I have just described. But you can’t bear the thought that at least part of your theory might be wrong.

Ecosystems

DAVID: It is all connected to us humans.

dhw: How can it all be connected to us humans if we are only descended from the 0.1% of survivors, as you have agreed. Stop backtracking.

DAVID: We survive as does the plentitude of life on Earth, all of which humans can use. If you could crack open your mind to imagine a designer who knows humans need support and supplies it, you would finally understand me.

dhw: For 3.X billion years, your designer knew that every creature you say he created needed support, and he supplied it. Many of them lived for millions and millions of years, and 99.9% of them had no connection with us humans or our supplies. If only you would stop trying to divert attention from the whole history of life, you would finally stop pretending that your theory makes sense even though you admit that it doesn’t!

DAVID: It does! Evolution produced a huge supply of living resources for our use.

Once more: Evolution, which you believe was controlled by your God, also produced a huge supply of living resources for the use of species over a period of 3.X thousand million years, and 99.9% of those species had no connection with humans, who were not even around at the time. See above for the sheer mess that you create with your theory, and which you try to blame on your version of an omnipotent, omniscient, incompetent God.