Back to theodicy and David's theories (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Friday, February 26, 2021, 14:18 (1364 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My view of God is not your humanized view. I'll repeat: All we can guess about God's desires is He uses logic to satisfy them.

dhw: Thank you for acknowledging that your God has desires. Now please explain why it is not logical to guess that since you are sure he is interested in his creations, he may have desired to create something that would interest him.

DAVID: Pure humanizing. He doesn't need interests.

Why do you ignore my responses to such comments? Yesterday I asked: Why “needs”? “Why not “wants” or, to use your own word: “desires”, as in your belief that he seems to be “full of purposeful activity to create what He desires to create with no other motive than the creations themselves”. I also asked what you meant by that.

DAVID: "he has no other motive than the creations themselves" Simple: his motive is to create.

And so once again, now that we have rid ourselves of “need”, and since you are certain that he is interested in his creations, why can’t you accept the possibility that a creator who creates what he desires to create might do so because he desires to create something that will interest him?

dhw: Yes, in your theory he had to create a huge bush of current life to create food energy for all. The problem you dodge here is that if humans were “His goal in evolution”, why did he have to create a huge bush of past life to create food energy for all the past life forms, 99% of which had no connection with humans (his goal)? Please stop this particular dodging game. You have admitted that you have no idea, so we should leave it at that.

DAVID: No connection is your illogical assertion. We will never agree, so stop asserting, and I won't mention God chose to evolve us again.

I do not have a problem with the idea that God, if he exists, chose to evolve us. The problem is bolded above, and I do not accept your assertion that every single extinct life form plus food supply was specially designed “as part of the goal of evolving [= specially designing] humans.” If you can tell me how the special design of 100% of the millions of extinct life forms and food supplies were essential for him to be able to design humans, I will stop attacking your idea of logic.

Viruses (taken from “Miscellany”)

So why do you keep reproducing his [Swinburne’s] ideas and then trying to support them instead of facing up to his contradictions? And he is your source, not mine!

DAVID: I said I take bits and pieces I agree with.

So I trust you agree with the objections I have raised to the idea that our identity is independent of what we can and can’t do, and whether we are “good” or bad”.

dhw: I have to agree that “good” and “bad” are subjective terms, but how else can we discuss such things? If God says that Covid and cancer are good, who are we to argue? But I’d like to think that there is a general consensus among us humans that certain things like cancer and Covid are “bad”, and that can be used as a basis for discussing your God’s possible nature and intentions. So why would an omnipotent God of “perfect goodness” create “bad” things?

DAVID: To repeat, so-called bad has turned out to be OK with further research.

I admire your faith that research will prove to us that cancer and Covid are OK, not to mention all the “bads” that you believe your God has directly designed. It’s not much of a solution to the problem of theodicy, though, is it?