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

by David Turell , Monday, April 29, 2024, 18:07 (17 days ago) @ dhw

Theodicy and boredom

The last time God acted in the present according to the OT was several thousand years ago. The NT has the virgin birth. Nothing since with the exception of Catholic miracles.

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.

DAVID: 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!

dhw: Of course you are free to make your own, and to contradict yourself, and concoct theories which not even you can understand. But if you tell us he is all-good though you blame him for creating bad bugs, he wants to be worshipped and recognized but has no self-interest, he wants to prevent boredom for himself and for us but he never gets bored, I’m afraid it’s rather difficult to follow your precepts.

I start with an allegorical God as described by the three Western monotheistic religions. I struggle with God's personal attributes knowing He may have none of a humankind. All of the attributes I've presented are 'maybes'. They may simply be human desires for Him to have. The Hebrew God was fierce and directive, The NT had Him as loving, and the Quran presents a God of great works. Humans simply invent the God they want. It is you who lump together many discussions out of context. No wonder you are so confused.

Under "Giant viruses"

DAVID: […] All species produced were relevant in their time.

dhw: Relevant to what? […]

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: 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: 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.

dhw: Of course the current survivors are the direct result of their ancestors, and 99.9% of their ancestors are dead. But the ancestors themselves were part of the 0.1% of species that formed the lines leading to the current survivors. The rest – as you have repeatedly confirmed – DID NOT LEAD to us and our food. Dinosaurs were our clear example. Please stop fiddling with the maths which you have explicitly accepted above.

What is here is what God wanted here, and the 0.1% here now, as an evolutionary endpoint show us God's exact purpose for evolution: humans with a giant brain and all the resources, vegetable and mineral, for our use.

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: 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.

dhw: You have confirmed my 1).

2) Culling is what evolution does!!!

If your God controlled evolution, then your God did the designing and the culling, as you have told us over and over again.

3) DAVID: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. Evolution is one whole process.

dhw: See above for your distortion of the maths and your confirmation that we and our food are NOT descended from 99.9% of past species. Of course we can split evolution apart into all its different branches, periods, extinctions, speciations. Neither you nor your food are descended from the brontosaurus. Multiply that example by countless millions.

Not from the brontos, but from mouse-sized mammals living at the same time. Co-evolution with extinctions and survivals. Stop concentrating on 99.9% extinct as if they were worthless, so God had to cull them. They made the current 0.1% living. Of course, they were culled. Your tortured math about evolution allows you to attack God's evolutionary design.