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

by David Turell , Monday, April 26, 2021, 18:43 (1305 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Your tortured dissection of a continuous evolutionary process in to bits and parts of segments continues totally illogically. You accept the huge bush is necessary for food supply and then ignore it.

dhw: The continuous evolutionary process has resulted in what you called ““a huge bush, all branches and twigs in every direction”. There is not one continuous line from bacteria to humans, and that is why it is absurd to claim that all life forms were “part of the goal of evolving [= specially designing] humans.”

There is a continuous line we can trace from bacteria to us. Just search for it. For example, mammals were there with the dinosaurs, and guess who survived. The giant bush comes from branches and twigs in all directions As econiche food suppply.

dhw: All bushes past and present were/are necessary for food supply, but you continue to ignore your own agreement that PAST bushes were for the PAST, not the present, and extinct life has no role to play in current life.

Surprisingly evolution has a past and a present in a continuity you insist upon chopping up into seemingly unrelated segments.

dhw: Please stop constantly editing your theory in your attempt to gloss over its illogicality.

You try to edit me into your irrational views.

dhw: You insist that he only had one purpose and was in total control. I point out the utter illogicality of combining this theory with the theory that he deliberately designed every extinct life form, 99% of which formed the branches and twigs that went in all directions except that of H. sapiens. So what is all this nonsense about allegory and symbolism?

DAVID: To try and help you see how blind you are about your constant humanizing of God.

dhw: How does that remove the sheer illogicality of your theory of evolution? And why should my “humanizing” be any less valid than your own, especially in the light of your agreement that he probably/possibly has thought patterns and emotions and also logic similar to ours?

Allegorically similar, but means may not be the exact same.

dhw: And indeed, having said that, why do you now regard it as impossible for a creator to create a conscious being which might in some way reflect his own consciousness (“in his own image”, as the Bible puts it)?

I've never said your thought about God creating us 'in His own image' was impossible. His 'image' is fully allegorical you must agree.

Our personal backgrounds:
(No need to repeat our earlier posts.)

dhw: [...] Life continues with its great mixture of sheer beauty and goodness balanced by sheer ugliness and evil, and this throws open the whole question of a possible God’s purpose, method, nature and attitude. Hence all the different theories on the subject and our own interminable discussions. Or there is no God at all, and the great free-for-all that to me is obvious throughout life’s history, was generated by an extraordinary piece of luck arising out of an eternal swirl of energy and matter. I suppose I’d better repeat that I remain agnostic.

DAVID: A great description of your views, ignoring the problems of obvious biochemical design which makes you hesitant to be fully atheistic. But you are primarily atheistic in your views.

dhw: I have always accepted the logic of the design argument, as you well know, and this whole website grew out of my dissatisfaction with Dawkins’ attempts to dismiss God as a delusion. You frequently attempt to brand me atheistic in your attempts to divert attention from the illogicality of your own “humanized” and totally illogical interpretation of your God’s purposes and methods and character in relation to the history of evolution. Sorry, but I really am an agnostic. Perhaps you should read the “brief guide”, which was the starting point of this website.

I know you are somewhat agnostic in accepting that God is perhaps possible, but there are degrees of agnostic, just as Dawkins pointed out degrees of atheism. I am not a full theist, since I try to ignore all religious opinionated teachings about God's personage. All positions have wandering/flexible boundaries of reasoning.