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

by dhw, Sunday, April 28, 2024, 09:15 (14 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: As with anyone, I can make my own theology and don't care if I don't exactly mirror every nuance of different religion's views.

dhw: No objection. I only object when your theories either make no sense to you, or contradict one another.

DAVID: I begin by accepting their basic God form as being all-powerful, all-knowing, etc. The rest follows. What gives you the right to complain? At least I believe.

dhw: What do you mean by “the rest follows”? How does it follow that an all-powerful, all-knowing God finds that he “has to” design and cull 99.9 species out of 100 that have no connection with his purpose, that an all-good God is to blame for creating bugs that kill millions of people, that a selfless, all-knowing God deliberately creates a system which he knows will result in millions of deaths, so that he and we can avoid boredom? I only complain about your illogicalities and contradictions.

DAVID: An all-everything God is recognized generally as the God of the Western monotheistic religions.

And what makes you think that this invalidates the various gods of the rest of the world?

DAVID: THE REST FOLLOWS!!! If He is everything, why evil, etc. follows. I introduced theodicy long ago to look at the problems an all-everything God presents.

And so far your answers have been that 1) evil doesn’t matter because there is more good than evil, 2) that a world without evil would be boring.

DAVID: That God creates what He wishes to create by evolving them is obvious. He evolved humans, which means He 'wished' to create them, not 'has to' as you distort the concept of creation.

Total distortion. Your theory is that he only wanted to create humans and therefore “had to” create 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with humans. Here is an exchange from November last year which should settle two of the current disputes between us:

dhw: We and our food have evolved from 0.1% of evolution’s products.

DAVID: Yes.

dhw: So why can’t you accept that…he wished to create…the vast variety of life forms extant and extinct, as opposed to being forced by the system he invented to create and cull forms he didn’t want? (Please don’t make me list the quotes in which you say he “had to do” it that way.)

DAVID: The ‘had to’ refers to required culling over millions of years.

These discussions drag on because you keep denying your own statements which are the subject of disagreement between us!

DAVID: Just as you distort the true meaning in Raup's statistics about required extinctions in evolution.

My interpretation of what you tell us is that extinctions and speciation are triggered by changing conditions, as a result of which 99.9% of organisms have disappeared. Therefore extinctions are a necessary feature of evolution, because without such changes in conditions, there would be no new species. Which species die out and which species survive is purely a matter of luck. Nowhere in your summary is there any mention of God, of us and our food as the sole purpose (or of any overall purpose), every single species being an ancestor of us and our food, or indeed any of the main features of your theory of evolution.

Double standards

DAVID: (in March 2024) I follow theistic thinking as presented by several sources. I have never found the sort of God you describe in any of it.

I then pointed out to you that the sort of God I was describing was to be found in process and deist theologies. You replied:

DAVID: Process and deist theologies are not mainstream, and not worth using. My view of God is mine, and just as valid as any other.

DAVID: (yesterday) You agreed, I have the right to reject any theory. You are quibbling about my rejection of process theology and deism I gave in brief. In actuality that both are not mainstream is obvious. What I didn't say is I've previously studied both and rejected them on valid grounds, as I am allowed to reject any theism I don't personally like.

I’m surprised you’d forgotten about them, and it’s news to me that you had already studied them, and I have no idea what “valid grounds” you think you have for rejecting them. The only reason you gave at the time was that they were not mainstream. Hence your double standards, because your own theories aren’t mainstream either.

DAVID: Simply, if there are no known standards for God, there can be no double standards. You have invented a strawman version of double standards, inventing them when they do not exist!!! You can sit on both sides of the fence, safely not required to find any standards. And free to pounce on anyone who makes choices, as you've done to me.

In the context of discussions, the term “double standards” refers to the arguments people offer when attacking other people’s beliefs or defending their own. For example, if your reason for rejecting a belief is that it is not mainstream (which is the only reason you gave), but you then go on to defend your own belief, even though it is not mainstream, you are applying double standards. If you had told us that you rejected deism because…(followed by a reason you felt was valid), you would not have been applying double standards. Please stop trying to mangle language.