Theodicy (Introduction)

by David Turell @, Wednesday, December 09, 2020, 15:24 (1196 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: My God is too purposeful to become your humanizing form. God controls call.

dhw: So he’s a non-human control freak. And you still haven’t offered a solution to the problem of “theodicy”, and you still haven’t offered a single objection to the logic of my proposal, and you still can’t understand that a God who creates things in order to give himself something interesting to watch is a purposeful God.

DAVID: Once again you describe a humanized God with a self-interest desire for entertainment.

dhw: There is no reason to suppose that a God who you are sure is interested in us, and has likings and satisfaction (human attributes you appear to accept), should not create things to like and interest and satisfy himself (dismissed as “humanized”). In fact, it sounds pretty logical to me. I don’t remember ever using the superficial term “entertainment”. Let us stick to your own terms: interest, liking and satisfaction.

Spectacle (your word) surely implies entertainment. My point is my God does not do any creating to satisfy His own self-interests. He simply creates. The problem is we must use our human terms to describe a non-human person, God.


DAVID: […] We can continue to disagree about our personal images of who God is. It is obvious we will never agree because you and I imagine Him totally differently. […]

dhw: The difference between us is that you can see the logic in all my theories to explain evolution and theodicy, and your grounds for dismissing them are the silly one of “humanization” (see above), and the fact that 1) they are different from your own (evolution), and 2) you don’t have a theory to explain theodicy, and 3) you are convinced that your satisfied God doesn’t create for “self-satisfaction”. None of these provide a single flaw in the logic of my theory.

My repeated answer to theodicy is not yours. God created things we interpret as 'bad' for His reasons we do not yet understand, using the previously 'useless appendix' as a prime example.


DAVID: I've described our obvious continuous differences above. There is no right or wrong. Our views of God are gulfs apart, and won't change.

dhw: Of course there is no right or wrong. All we have are theories, and we can only test them for feasibility. I have offered you a (theistic) theory which explains both the vast bush of life forms (evolution) and the problem of theodicy, and I’m still waiting to hear why it isn’t feasible.

I don't accept a version of God who gives up primary controls over creation. That is what your theory does.


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