New Miscellany 1: evolution, atheism, future (General)

by dhw, Monday, May 26, 2025, 14:05 (7 days ago) @ David Turell

Evolution and “culling”

DAVID: God is not human and does not develop new ideas. His goals are clear to him.

dhw: A God who gets new ideas is no more human than a God who starts out with a specific purpose. His goals will certainly be clear to him, but that does not mean he has only one goal, which is to produce us plus food, and therefore messily and inefficiently produces 99.9 out of 100 species that have no connection with his single goal.

DAVID: Your usual distortion of evolution.

dhw: The messy, cumbersome, inefficient theory is YOUR distortion, for which even you cannot find any rational explanation!

DAVID: God is faith not rationality! You only want proofs that do not exist.

As usual, you fall back on the question of God’s existence, which is not the issue here. You have irrational faith in the theory that your God is an inefficient designer, whose sole purpose was humans etc., as bolded above. When will you stop dodging?

Animal minds: Insect tool use

DAVID: All I can say is God designs the complexities of biochemical life.

dhw: I wish that was all you did say, but it isn’t. You insist on imposing a single goal and an illogical method on him, and you insist that innovations, lifestyles, strategies etc. were either set out in a book of instructions 3.8 billion years ago, or have been the results of his direct dabbling, and could not possibly be the result of his giving biochemical life the intelligence to design its own modes of survival.

DAVID: All I see in biochemical life is a very careful design of the reactions, all of which in total produce life. In all cases there is minor adaptability, or major in existing extremophiles, but we do not see new speciation.

Of course we see speciation! But we can’t explain it! One explanation is that the cells are intelligent. But you insist that your God must have designed every species, and…here we go again… he must have done so solely in order to design humans plus food, although 99.9% of them were irrelevant to humans plus food and had to be culled. When will you stop dodging?

Atheism

DAVID: My God is goal oriented, yours experiments. A vast difference.

dhw: Firstly, I have offered different possible goals; secondly, experimentation can be goal-oriented; thirdly the fact that, for example, enjoyment of creation and discovery is vastly different from your God’s messy, cumbersome and inefficient pursuit of a single goal, does not mean that your version must be true!

DAVID: I prefer my version of God over yours neither of which is "TRUE". You want exactitude and never dare dip your toe in faith. The chasm is too big for you.

Nobody knows the truth. As an agnostic, I recognize that we cannot have exactitude, but we can at least offer theories. You have faith in your own theory, that your God is a messy, inefficient designer. I point out that there are other theistic theories which fit in logically with the history of life but do not ridicule your God. Your only argument seems to be that I ought to have faith in your theory.

End of evolution?

DAVID: Do you see any speciation? Evolution is over.

And:

DAVID: What 'new conditions' do you imagine? I see none.

dhw: Possible changes to the sun, massive objects smashing into the Earth, human activities (uncontrolled climate change, nuclear warfare etc.) rendering the planet uninhabitable by humans, but habitable by other organisms that can cope. Do you really believe that in a million years’ time the Earth and its inhabitants will be the same as we have now?[/b]

DAVID: You are touting pure theoretical future guesses. We may adapt a bit.

dhw: You asked for possible new conditions in the future. I gave you some. Of course they are guesses. So is your prediction that there will be no more evolution. We are not talking about humans adapting a bit! If evolution is over, there can be no more new species. Presumably, then, your guess is that in a million of even a billion, or even three billion years’ time, everything will be virtually the same as now, except for a few minor tweaks to us humans. And you don’t see this as “touting a theoretical guess”!

DAVID: From what we see now, that is the future presuming the Earth survives all possible damages.

You think that in a million years’ time, everything on Planet Earth will be the same - providing nothing changes! Not much of an argument, is it? And you asked: “What ‘new conditions’ do you imagine? I see none.” And because you see none, you can state with certainty that evolution is over, although it may not be over if conditions change!