Theodicy (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, November 25, 2020, 14:52 (1460 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: If you can’t explain your own theories, how can you call them logical?

DAVID: I have made the point that I arrived at accepting God as the Creator from a long and serious view of the evidence presented. My logic follows from that initial conclusion when I attempt to explain what is going on. On that basis there are some deeds by God that I simply accept. One of them is He chose to evolve humans.

dhw: As you know perfectly well, that is not the problem with your theory! It is totally logical for a believer in God and in evolution to say that God chose to evolve humans! What is not logical is to argue that God directly designed every species and food supply that ever lived, 99% of which had no connection with humans, and yet all of them were “part of the goal of evolving (= directly designing) humans.” You admit that you can’t explain why he would choose such a method to achieve such a goal, so you can hardly call it logical

Same illogical complaint. The ID folks believe a designer designed the forms that appear in evolution. They never say God, but I do. There are herds of science folks who contribute to the Uncommon Descent website. If God is the Creator, he can chose any way He wishes to create anything He wants. Seeing the necessity for design keeps you Agnostic. Its all part of the same evidence that I use more concretely than you. And I can't be expected to have factual reason for God's choices. They are in His mind only, and are my logical guesses.

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DAVID: We have no way of knowing that God has any human attributes!!! Your statements about him and mine are all guesswork!!!

dhw: Nobody “knows” anything – even whether your God exists. That is why we theorize. The question is whether our theories are feasible.

DAVID: The only thing that is safe is the assumption that He is logical in what He chooses to do. I assume He is serious about it, but it could all be just be for fun! A a believer that is far as I am willing to go. My past quotes were suggestive responses to your pointed questions about His personality, about which we strongly disagree.

dhw: The quotes are unequivocal, and they make perfect sense. I didn’t force you to say he probably has similar attributes to ours or he “very well could think like us”. And so as we theorize about why your God might have created life, and about why there is evil in the world, it remains totally absurd to dismiss a theory on the grounds that it involves him having human attributes, although he probably has human attributes. And so I asked you to point out the logical flaws in my theory.

DAVID: There are no illogical statements you make from your primary view of God as part human.

dhw: “Part human” conjured up lots of silly images. To remind you: you are sure that your God is interested in his creations. I have suggested that if he exists, maybe he created his creations in order to have something outside himself that he could find interesting. No other “attributes” involved. Hardly “part human”. And I suggest that a free-for-all would be more interesting than a dull and predictable Garden of Eden (your own image). This explains the vast and ever changing bush of life AND the existence of evil, since a free-for-all would produce an almost endless flow of ways to survive, including good cooperation and nasty self-interest. Thank you for accepting that this is a logical theory. There is no need for “primary view of God as part human”.

All the above is humanizing God. How do you know He needs 'interesting somethings' to follow? The problems in life we face make life interesting and not Garden of Eden, but may not follow any intention from God.