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

by dhw, Wednesday, May 28, 2025, 10:45 (5 days ago) @ David Turell

Evolution and “culling”

DAVID: How can I dodge when I am following Adler's teachings who used our appearance through evolution as his proof of God. Your whole distortion of evolution is a dodge.

dhw: Yet again, you fall back on proof of your God’s existence, which is not the subject here. As you know perfectly well, the subject is your interpretation of evolution, so in order not to dodge, would you please once and for all explain to me why your all-powerful, all-knowing, first-cause God deliberately and knowingly created and had to cull 99.9 species out of 100 that were irrelevant to what you believe was his one and only purpose of creating us plus our food, even though you believe he had the power to create any species he liked “de novo”.

DAVID: As you fully know, there is no answer. If we make God the creator then evolution is His work and He becomes responsible for its inefficiencies and efficiencies. I accept all of it since I chose God.

You are still dodging! Yet again: the existence of God is not the subject here! What you accept is your own totally illogical interpretation of your God’s purpose for and use of evolution, which even ridicules him as being messy and inefficient. You have no answer to my criticism because you “fully know” that your theory is nonsensical.

DAVID: Same distortion. Evolution culls!!!

dhw: There is no distortion. The process of evolution has resulted in 99.9% extinction, which you can call “culling” if you like. But if your God is first cause, he invented the process of evolution, and it is he who decided that species should be culled. But according to you, he designed them, and then he culled them because they were irrelevant to his purpose of creating us plus food. Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God invent what you yourself call a messy, cumbersome, inefficient means of achieving the goal you impose on him?

DAVID: See above.

I’ve seen. You have no answer. You know it’s nonsense, but you can’t bear to even contemplate the possibility that at least part of your nonsensical theory might be wrong!

Atheism

DAVID: You don't have to accept my God. I just don't like any you have invented.

dhw: Of course. You simply have faith in a theory which makes no sense, and pretend that my objections are somehow invalidated by my agnosticism. And yet you can’t find any logical objection to my alternative theistic theories other than the fact they entail thought patterns and emotions like ours, although you accept that he probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours.

DAVID: You forget (conveniently) I approach God's attributes as allegorically equivalent to ours.

You forget that “allegorically” has no meaning in our discussions, because YOU know precisely what you mean when you speculate that your God might enjoy and be interested in his creations, might want to be recognized and worshipped, might or might not love us etc. Your question is whether he does or doesn’t, not whether he uses a different dictionary from ours.

End of evolution?

DAVID: Evolution is over. […] What ‘new conditions’ do you imagine. I see none.

And:
DAVID: We've only been here 315,000 years with enormous civilized developments. What we develop is what will change in the future. The conditions of the Earth seem stabilized. Do you think there will be super humans?

dhw: It’s perfectly possible that there will be no humans at all. If, as you claim, evolution is over, that means there will be no more new species. You were unable to imagine any future changes to the planet, and I gave you a list, each item of which could result in the extinction of current species (including humans) and the birth of new species – which is precisely what has happened throughout the course of life’s history so far. That doesn’t mean the new species will be superhumans! They might be very simple forms of life. The only deciding factor will be their ability to survive in the new conditions.

DAVID: I can agree to that. The Earth could have destabilizing events.

In other words, you agree that evolution may not be over. Thank you. End of discussion.