Return to David's theory of evolution, purpose & theodicy (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, April 15, 2024, 21:30 (14 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I don't ignore, I've logically answered your strange misconstruction of the evolutionary process.

dhw: Your only answer to the question why your God would have deliberately designed and then culled 99.9 out of 100 species that were irrelevant to the one and only purpose you impose on him is that you can’t be expected to know God’s reason for such a messy, cumbersome and inefficient way of achieving his goal.

That contorted answer in not mine. Evolution requires a culling process, which you seem to condemn. God produced us on Earth with all of its resources at our command. Pure history.

dhw: You accused me of avoiding God by saying we are not special. Both accusations are manifestly untrue. My criticism of your wacky theory does not entail any “distorted view” on my part unless you have changed your theory since yesterday.

DAVID: Your evolutionary statistics are total misrepresentations of Raup's book.

dhw: You have told us Raup calculates that 99.9% of species are extinct, but you have informed us that he does not subscribe to your theory, as bolded above. Please give us your own arguments instead of hiding behind Raup.

All Raup said was 0.1% are the living result!!!

DAVID: Evolution happened. If God is in charge, that was His method. He culled out all the species until now by extinction. The 99.9% are today's ancestors.

dhw" Please stop it. The whole point is that the 99.9% of extinct species would have included the tiny percent which were our ancestors, while the rest were NOT our ancestors. How many more times are you going to deny what you have already agreed? Here it is again:
dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived?

No. The 0.1% alive are all the survivors!!! The result, undistorted, is we are here with all of Earth's resources at our command.

DAVID: You dodged any discussion of purpose!

dhw:[…] . We have discussed “purpose” ad nauseam. You have no idea what purpose your God could have had in designing the irrelevant 99.9%. I have offered you three theistic purposes to explain the 99.9% (experimentation, learning process with new ideas, free-for-all), and although they explain the history, you reject them all because you they don’t fit in with your wishes.

DAVID: My form of God is not yours. He knows what to do and does it.

dhw: In my alternatives he also knows what to do and does it. But although in the past you have agreed that they fit in logically with the history, you reject them because they don’t fit in with the God you wish for.

Yes, I want my God I wish for.

dhw: […] Please tell us as briefly as possible what evidence you have found, for instance, that your God is omniscient, has the same moral standards as ours, and is all-good.

DAVID: God's omniscience is obvious as the evidence from intracellular biochemistry shows.

dhw: I had no idea that knowledge was confined to intracellular biochemistry. How do you know that your God knew the holocaust would happen, Beethoven would write 9 symphonies, and a billion years from now there will be…?

DAVID: Very complex living biochemistry requires God's omniscience. I can only assume God knew of human productions.

dhw: Omniscience means knowledge of everything! I ask for evidence, and you admit that you can only assume he knows everything.

From biochemical design I see a massive mind.

DAVID: God is all-good, based on the reality He produced. The challenge is a logical moral code must be obeyed by all humans.

dhw: As first cause, he must have produced all the realities that have existed, including the natural disasters for which you blame him, and the human ability to create the human disasters which he knew would happen. How do you know he is all-good by your own standards of goodness?

DAVID: I take all-goodness as by definition.

dhw: Since nobody knows God, how can anyone possibly define his attributes with any authority? This is another assumption on your part, and if our world is the “reality He produced”, you cannot ignore the evil which he allowed to take place in it. In line with your latest theories, would you regard God’s desire to relieve his and our boredom as moral justification for the millions of people who have died or suffered from the evil he allowed to happen (human evil) or caused to happen (he is to blame for the natural evils)?

Ancient Hebrew philosophy of Dayenu, it is enough, is the theodistic answer.