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

by David Turell , Wednesday, April 24, 2024, 15:54 (10 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Of course, Raup never mentioned God! I'm forced to take material without any God

DAVID: I introduced Raup as part of my research. You proceeded to simply distort his conclusions to support your wacky idea God wasted time culling ' unnecessary organisms'.
And under “Giant viruses”:
DAVID: Evolution requires culling, doesn't it?

dhw: Extinction (“”culling” implies purpose) inevitably happens when existing species cannot cope with new conditions. It is new conditions that cause extinction and trigger new speciation. And Raup attributes the history of speciation to luck, not to a divine purpose. You, however, attribute the process to an omniscient and omnipotent God who begins with a single goal. Why in heaven’s name would he tell himself that he has to design and then extinguish 99.9 out of 100 species irrelevant to his goal? You don’t know. Only he can tell us why he would adopt what you call such a “messy”, “cumbersome”, “inefficient” method. It is you who distort Raup, and it is YOUR wacky theory that your first cause God imposed a nonsensical rule upon himself. And yet you accuse me of distortion! I have offered you no less than three alternative THEISTIC explanations for the 99.9%. So why do you cling to Raup, who doesn’t offer you a single one?

Raup taught me how to look at evolution statistically. I never imagined the wild fantasies you would concoct about Raup and his findings. Same old idiocy: God chose to evolve us for whatever HIS reason.

Theodicy and relief from boredom

dhw: I’m sure you’ll agree that your God, who you believe is interested in his creations, would find puppets pretty boring.

DAVID: Exactly!

dhw: ...and you defended your theory that he deliberately and knowingly “allowed” human evil for our own sakes:

DAVID: That God did not want a boring Garden of Evil for us, is a reasonable guess.

dhw: I’m not objecting to your theory. But I do object to your double standards: if I propose the same theory, I am "humanizing" God. If you propose it, then it’s a reasonable guess.

DAVID: Wrong. It is not God who is bored, but humans in a Garden of Eden type of life. My approach is not your interpretation.

dhw: You have ignored the quote above, now bolded in its entirety, that your God would find puppets pretty boring. And so your theory has your God giving humans and bugs their free will to do evil in order to relieve his boredom and to relieve ours, although you have agreed that it is perfectly possible for us to enjoy life without evil!

DAVID: If nothing ever went wrong, isn't that boring? For us, possibly for God?

dhw: Thank you acknowledging your own theory that God created or allowed evil to relieve his and our boredom. It is almost identical to one of my own proposals: that your God might have designed all life, including humans, because he wanted to enjoy creating things he would find interesting. It is you who pooh-poohed it on the grounds that it “humanized” your so-called selfless God. Now you are defending the very theory you rejected. However, you have also agreed that life can be interesting without rape, murder and holocausts. Things can go wrong without being evil! It’s not evil if your roses don’t grow, you can’t do maths, your football team loses, your computer needs repairing. I wouldn’t even call your theories about God’s purpose, method and nature “evil”, no matter how wacky, inefficient, messy, illogical, contradictory and wrong they may be. (See the other evolution thread for the moral dilemma.)

Same return to a humanized self-interested God. Yes, there are other problems to test us than evil.

Double standards

DAVID: I am not mentally crippled! I am not required to pick a view based on popularity! I pick and choose bits of theism as it fits the theology, I find logically comfortable.

dhw: An admirably independent approach. However, you wrote: bbb“Process and deist theologies are not mainstream, and not worth using. My view of God is mine, and just as valid as any other.” But you can’t see that someone else may pick and choose, and their non-mainstream theology is theirs and may be just as valid as your non-mainstream. Bad because it's non-mainstream, but good if it's YOUR non-mainstream = double standards.

DAVID:[…] Each theory has good and bad parts, open to evaluation!! I can pick and choose according to my judgments.

dhw: Of course you can. But that has nothing to do with “double standards”, and nor does your personal attack on my agnosticism. (No, I am not “crippled emotionally from decisions”. There are simply certain questions which I find impossible to answer.) In the bolded statement above, about process and deist theologies, your “standard” is mainstream theology. If someone else’s theory is not mainstream, it’s not worth using. However, you pride yourself on the fact that your theology is not mainstream either, but I presume you think it is worth using. One “standard” for other people, but not for yourself. That = double standards.

Same distortion of 'double standards'. I have the right to pick and choose between theories using any standard of proof I wish.