New Miscellany 1: theories and future of evolution (General)

by dhw, Friday, May 30, 2025, 12:37 (3 days ago) @ David Turell

Evolution and “culling”

DAVID: The logic is obvious. Evolution occurred and produced us. God exists and ran evolution to produce us.

I am accepting the premise of God’s existence, because we are arguing about his purpose, methods and nature. Here you specify that his one and only purpose was to produce us.

DAVID: You distort the description of evolution to make the culling process a bad thing. It is not.

It is you who are blatantly leaving out central details and thereby distorting the nature of your own description of evolution. What you have left out is the fact that you have no idea why your God would deliberately design and then have to “cull” 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with his purpose, although you think he was able to produce any species “de novo”, and it is YOU who call his culling process messy, cumbersome and inefficient. Are you now telling us that being messy, cumbersome and inefficient is a “good thing”? Please stop dodging.

DAVID (under “snails”) I see whole organisms responding to new conditions. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: Of course. So do I. And whole organisms are composed of cells, and we know that the cells change in response to new conditions. But you believe they only do so when God preprogrammes them or fiddles with them or gives them lessons.

DAVID: God speciates.

dhw: Speciation restructures whole organisms, which are composed of cell communities, in response to new conditions. You agree, but your God preprogrammed every one 3.8 billion years ago (having looked into his crystal ball to foresee every future change in conditions), or he pops in to dabble, though 99.9% of his preprogramming and/or dabbles have nothing to do with his sole purpose, but hey, let’s just call that inefficiency.

DAVID: You keep forgetting evolution naturally culls at that rate.

dhw: You keep forgetting that your first-cause God, if he exists, invented the process of evolution, and you are the one who insists that the process is not “natural” but is controlled by him in a totally incomprehensible, illogical and inefficient manner.

DAVID: Evolution is not some mysterious process mismanaged by God. It is cumbersome and inefficient compared to direct creation.

And you have no idea why your all-powerful, all-knowing God chose to design and then cull 99.9 irrelevant species out of 100 in order to produce a species (plus food) he could have produced directly. Hence your ridicule of his inefficiency. Thank you for this confirmation.

God’s human thought patterns and emotions

DAVID: We don't know what dictionary God uses. That is a major point.

dhw: It is no point at all. You and I know what you mean when you talk of his enjoyment, interest, desire to be recognized and worshipped. If his dictionary defines enjoyment as dislike, interest as disinterest, recognition as ignorance, and worship as hatred, then so be it. That would simply mean, in your terms, that he does not enjoy etc. Please stop playing silly language games.

DAVID: Of course we know what our terms mean to us but NOT to God. We discuss Him at our level. It is a fact not a simple game.

When you suggest that your God enjoys, is interested, wants recognition, wants to be worshipped, may or may not love us etc. you are not asking whether he defines these words differently from the way we do, but whether he does or does not have the same thought patterns and emotions as we mean by those words. Please stop dodging.

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: Evolution is over. Disasters to the Earth will simply kill species, including us.

dhw: The history of Planet Earth shows that disasters kill most species, but a small minority survives, and that small minority creates new species. The fact is, we have absolutely no idea what will happen in the next million years, let alone the next three billion years, and so you cannot possibly know that evolution is now over.

DAVID: This current episode of evolution is over. A new episode after a major change is possible.

If it is possible that there will be new episodes of evolution, then it is clearly absurd to say that evolution is over. Thank you. That should be the end of this discussion.