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

by David Turell , Tuesday, April 30, 2024, 20:02 (17 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I start with an allegorical God as described by the three Western monotheistic religions.

dhw: If your God is an “allegory”, he is a fictional symbol. I thought you and other monotheists regarded him as a real being.

Real and allegorical. You still don't know how to think about God!

DAVID: 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.

dhw: There is no “discussion” out of context. I have given you examples of your “maybes” which directly contradict one another. If you say he is to blame for bad bugs but is all-good, then how does that make me confused? Yes, you and others “simply invent the God they want”, and yet when I suggest that the “mess” of evolution might not have been a mess at all, but might have been precisely what your God wanted – an interesting free-for-all, or a progressive series of experiments as he developed the potential of his initial invention (the living cell) – you dismiss it as “humanizing”. You have agreed that your God might have human thought patterns and emotions, but only your contradictory humanizations are OK (as listed above), whereas my non-contradictory humanizations are unthinkable. More double standards.

Yes! You are using no standards of how to think about God as I do. Adler taught me from scratch. Your humanizing approach is not acceptable. I am using standards of which you are totally unaware.

Under "Giant viruses" now God’s purpose and method

Herewith the relevant quotes:

DAVID: […] All species produced were 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.

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: 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.

dhw: As usual, you have left out the 99.9% of extinct species that were only relevant to their time, and from which we and our food are not descended, and which your purposeful, omniscient and omnipotent God specially designed and then culled, though you have no idea why. Just that his method was messy, cumbersome and inefficient.

Again, your nonsensical complaint God should not have evolved us. We evolved, and for me God did the evolutionary design just as He wished. That is my idea as to 'why'. Why can't you understand that? But I do know the answer: you don't know how to think about God as theologians do.

Transferred from “More Miscellany”

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Not from the brontos, but from mouse-sized mammals living at the same time.

dhw: Correct. The brontos and 99.9% of their fellow dinosaurs (bird ancestors were the only exception) were irrelevant to your God’s one and only purpose.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: No they didn’t. It was the 0.1% that led to the current living.

Of course, the surviving 0.1% represent the past 99.9%. It must add up to 100%!

DAVID: Of course, they were culled. Your tortured math about evolution allows you to attack God's evolutionary design.

dhw: I am not attacking God’s evolutionary design (assuming he exists). You are! You insist that he designed and culled the 99.9% that were irrelevant to his one and only purpose, and you ridicule him by saying his method was messy, cumbersome and inefficient. I propose alternative theories, which you reject because although they have your God achieving precisely what he set out to achieve, they are more “humanizing” than his messy, cumbersome inefficiency.

He did not cull them because they were 'irrelevant' to his purpose. That is your tortured interpretation of God's evolution. Your inability to think about God as theologians do creates all sort of problems for your ability to discuss God's attributes.