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

by David Turell , Sunday, April 28, 2024, 15:42 (14 days ago) @ dhw

Theodicy and boredom

dhw: And so according to you, he allowed/created evil in order to relieve boredom. For himself and for us.

DAVID: No!!! I can't imagine God wanting puppets. He gave us free will instead. Stop distortions! My God does not get bored. No Garden of Eden, but a challenging life makes more sense.

dhw: He would not want puppets because he would find them boring. “Exactly,” you said. And so he gave us free will, knowing that we would use it to rape, murder, slaughter etc. As we have agreed, it is perfectly possible to lead an interesting. “challenging” life without evil. So why would an all-good God want to create the bugs for which you blame him or to allow human evil?

We have free will. We cause evil. God does not 'allow' evil in your sense. As for bugs, without them life would not exist.

dhw: […]And this is the God you tell us is selfless and without self-interest.

DAVID: God has no self-interest and does not have a personality trait of boredom. Stop humanizing Him. When will you ever learn how to really think out Him?

dhw: When will you ever learn to stop contradicting yourself? Earlier you wrote: ”There are no established standards for who God is.” How then can you possibly announce that he has no self-interest or boredom, when you’ve just proposed, championed and claimed moral justification for the theory that your God allowed/created evil to alleviate boredom.

When will you learn to follow precepts??? I said no standards for God. So, I can make my own! Theological thought is not a democracy where the majority wins!

Under "Giant viruses"

DAVID: It is your cockamamy view of evolution that is at fault. All species produced were relevant in their time.

dhw: Relevant to what? Certainly not to what you believe to have been your God’s one and only purpose (us and our food), since only 0.1% of them led to us and our food.

DAVID: Relevant to current ecosystems of the time in evolution.

dhw: [..] Thank you for confirming their irrelevance to the present, which is the reason why your theory of evolution is so illogical.

DAVID: This is where your maths about evolution are so confused: The 0.1% surviving COULD NOT be here without the preceding 99.9% having lived!!! Stop the irrationality of your dodge.
And:
DAVID: All extinction led to current new living forms.

dhw: But the 0.1% are the lines of organisms that led to us and our food. Read what you wrote:
dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

dhw: If we plus food are not descended from the 99.9%, how can they have led to us plus food? We used the dinosaurs as our obvious example: only birds descended from them. The rest were dead ends.

DAVID: Dead ends were Raup's extinctions. All leading to today's huge complex bush of life.

dhw: The extinct species preceded today’s bush, but how can all extinct species have led to today’s bush if today’s bush is only descended from 0.1% of them?

That is your total math mess!! The 0.1% current survivors are the direct result of their 99.9% ancestors. You can't have one without the other. You constantly split them apart as if they are not related. Raup's statistical overall analysis confuses you.

Transferred from “More Miscellany”

dhw: Please tell us which part of the [..] theory is a distortion. To be precise: do you now reject your beliefs that (1) we and our food were your God’s sole purpose, 2) that he chose to design and cull 99.9% of past species, 3) that we and our food are descended from only 0.1% of past species, which means the remaining 99.9% were irrelevant to his purpose?

DAVID: Your invented discussion of the statistics of survival in evolution is wildly illogical.

dhw: It is precisely what you agreed to. 99.9% did not lead to us or our food. (See above.) There are no distortions, and your denial of your own theories is “totally preposterous”.

DAVID: No, once again, the 0.1% currently surviving came from the 99.9% as their ancestors.

dhw: See above. I note that you can’t find any other supposed “weird distortion” of your theories.

Constantly answered in the past: 1) we and our Earth's resources were God's purpose. We are a most unexpected, unusual result of a natural evolution. 2) Culling is what evolution does!!! 3) What is here living on Earth, the final 0.1% is for our use. They came from the 99.9% their ancestors. Evolution is not 'these' 99.9% and 'those' 0.1% surviving. Stop splitting them apart. Evolition is one whole process.