Theodicy (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, November 15, 2020, 12:16 (1258 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Again you want God to act like a human. My thought patterns for God refer to logic, no more. I don't know if He has emotions like ours, if at all. And I don't know if He cares about us. Why do I have to repeat this over and over???

dhw: Nobody knows his nature (or even if he exists), which is why we offer different theories. The question is simply how feasible these might be. If you didn’t want possible explanations for the existence of evil in a world you think your God directly designed, then why did you raise the subject? You have said repeatedly that your God “very well could think like us”, so how do you know he doesn’t?

DAVID: Your same old attempt. My reference to God's thought patterns is a reference to the use of logic, nothing more.

Two quotes: “He and we probably have similar thought patterns and emotions beyond just simple logical thought“ and “We can only know his logic is like ours”. I’m sorry, but if his logic is like ours, we should be able to understand it, and emotions are not confined to the use of logic. You still haven’t answered my questions: 1) how do you know your God does NOT think like us? 2) Why did you raise the subject of theodicy in the first place? 3) What logical reason do you have for rejecting my own proposed explanation?

DAVID: I don't accept your theory on the basis that I see God in tight control of what happens. Therefore He created the bugs we view bad for His own reasons which are not obvious to us at this time. We may find out why with more research. What all your theories always do is loosen His controls.

You reject my theory because you believe God deliberately designed the bad bugs and you don’t know why. Your own fixed belief does not provide a single reason for rejecting the logic of my proposal, which offers an explanation for the whole of evolution and for theodicy. (I’ll repeat the theory to make it easier for you to pinpoint any logical flaws you can find, as opposed to proposals that simply conflict with your own fixed beliefs:)

dhw: In my (theistic) theory, he did NOT make the bad bugs but only the original cells from which they descended. And they designed their own modes of survival just as the good bugs and every other organism did, using their perhaps God-given form of intelligence. Survival was their purpose, and God’s purpose was to create a self-designing system that would be an endless source of interest to him, though we can’t know his thoughts as he watches us with interest.