Return to David's theory of theodicy;Plantinga & Held (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 16, 2024, 11:32 (13 days ago) @ David Turell

Plantinga

I am juxtaposing entries in order to distinguish between two different arguments.

David’s theory of evolution is that his God’s one and only purpose was to design us plus our food, and so inexplicably his God designed and culled 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with his purpose.

dhw: […] If God exists, I have even suggested that one explanation for the 99.9% of “irrelevant” species was that he created life as one vast free-for-all, right through from speciation to human machinations. This would also give you a logical explanation for human evil, which would have its roots in the egocentric battle for survival.

DAVID: Your alternative of irrelevant species is crazy. What would humans eat, how would they live without the organisms you consider irrelevant.

The irrelevant species are the 99.9% which are no longer here and which were not even our ancestors (who you agree amounted to only 0.1% of organisms that ever lived). How could humans eat organisms which are no longer here?

DAVID: [..] I can't know God's reason for His creative results, but producing us is His obvious intention with all the manifestations.

dhw: Producing the vast variety of species unconnected with us would also have been his obvious intention with all the different manifestations. Why do you keep forgetting the 3.X billion years of history which you have dismissed as your God’s messy, cumbersome and inefficient way of designing us plus food?

DAVID: God can take whatever amount of time He needed. We know His system was not direct.

dhw: Assuming he exists, we do not know that we plus food were his one and only goal, or that he deliberately designed every individual species. The fact that we only appeared after 3.X billion years’ worth of species that had no connection with us would seem to suggest that being all-powerful and all-knowing (according to you), he must have had a different purpose for designing the 99.9 irrelevant species, or that he did not design them. How about relief from boredom as a motive for the ever-changing variety?

DAVID: WE must use history to tell us what God did. We are here in charge of the Earth. That is what God wanted.

And history shows us that approx. 99.9% of organisms that lived before us had no connection with us, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that your God had a reason for wanting them. You, on the other hand, would prefer to forget them, since they contradict your wacky theory of evolution.

DAVID: Survival can occur without evil.

dhw: Of course it can. Just as enjoyment of life can occur without evil (see below). But in the free-for-all, it doesn’t. You missed out my reference to carnivorousness as a forerunner: killing for personal gain.

DAVID: It has to be dog-eat-dog. Life requires a constant input of energy.

Herbivores do not eat kill and eat their fellow animals.

Theodicy and relief from boredom

DAVID: Are you suggesting God should have kept us as puppets?
And:
DAVID: Human choices cause evil. Evil is our fault, God not involved.

dhw: You have said that your God wanted to relieve the boredom of a Garden of Eden, and that morally justifies his knowingly allowing murder, rape, the holocaust etc., and for good measure he is also to be blamed for creating bugs that kill millions of us.

DAVID: We cause evils, not God!!!
And:
DAVID: Pure Eden is boring. Obviously.

dhw: why do you think boredom can only be avoided if millions of people suffer the effects of the evil that your God has created or allowed? (See also under "Giant viruses".)

DAVID: Your usual tortured reasoning. Humans do many things that entertain, yet not be evil!!!

dhw: That is what I have just pointed out!!! You can avoid boredom without millions of people suffering from evil. You have now informed us that your God allowed murder, rape and the holocaust because he and we would have been bored without them. (He would have found puppets boring.) Your new version of God is just as egocentric as Plantinga’s, and you have once more contradicted yourself, because here you agree that we do not need evil in order to relieve possible boredom.

DAVID: Same confused view. We need bad bugs in good places (gut biome). There are necessary tradeoffs.

Irrelevant to your new theory, which is that your God wanted evil because without it, life would have been boring. This contradicts your belief that God is selfless, and it supports one of my proposals: that his purpose for creating life might have been to enjoy creating things that would be interesting. But you dismissed that possibility because it “humanized” God in a way you disapproved of.

Double standards

DAVID: Once again you illogically attack my choices. Of course, choice involves rejections. You simply want to float neutrally above all.

You are determined to ignore the meaning of the term “double standards”. The attack is not on your choices or rejections, but on your application of a particular standard (you reject deism because it is not mainstream), while you defend your panentheism although it is not mainstream either. Non-mainstream is bad if it’s someone else’s opinion, but it’s OK if it’s your opinion.