Theodicy (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 20, 2020, 07:38 (1496 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Totally humanized view of a spectating God. I still believe that God presented challenges for a more interesting life than in Eden. We've got the brains for it.

dhw: (Silly "humanized" argument demolished by yourself on "errors" thread.) More interesting for whom? Do you think your God is watching or not?

DAVID: I'm sure He sees what is going on with His own level of interest[/b], unknown to us.(dhw’s bold)

dhw: If you are sure that he sees it, you must be sure that he is watching it, and if he is watching it and doing nothing, it is a spectacle.

DAVID: Yes, by definition we create a spectacle. But you mean God expects it to entertain Him, and that is not the way I think God would view it. Per Adler, God's interest in us is a 50/50 proposition.

I have not used the word “entertain”. I have no idea what God might be thinking as he watches the spectacle. But to revert to your own past image, do you think a painter is “entertained” when he enjoys his own paintings? I couldn’t care less about Adler’s percentages. If YOU are sure that he sees what is going on, then YOU are sure he is watching. And why would he watch if he wasn’t interested? And why do you think he didn’t create every life form so that he could have something interesting to watch?

dhw: Now please tell us why YOU think your God created or allowed evil.

DAVID: All I am left with for the enth time is to state: to make life interesting as far as bad bugs are concerned….

To make life interesting for whom?

DAVID…and providentially gave us the brains to overcome them.

But bad bugs existed long before humans. Why do you think that your God spent 3.X billion years designing bad bugs, meat-eating monsters, murderous parasites before he produced us with our brains to overcome them?

DAVID: At the same time those brains have free will, and we create our own evil God cannot stop.

And I suggest that much of our own evil evolved from the manner in which earlier organisms infected, exploited, killed and ate their fellow organisms in pursuit of their own survival. The root of most evil is selfishness. That is not a criticism of our fellow organisms who have to be selfish in order to survive. I am merely pointing out the roots of evil which lie in the system your God designed. As you say, it makes life more interesting for him than a Garden of Eden, which would explain why he designed the system the way it is. No accidents, no inability to prevent evil – simply a God who knows what he wants and designs the system that will produce what he wants. Just a theory, but is there anything in it that contradicts the history of life as we know it?