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

by dhw, Wednesday, April 28, 2021, 11:14 (1303 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

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

dhw: For the umpteenth time, they are not chopped up. Each of the thousands of lines is continuous, but only one of them leads to humans. Please stop making me repeat the same old answer to the same old objection, based on your distorted use of language. And please stop trying to gloss over your totally illogical theory that all 99% of the lines that had no connection with humans were part of the goal of designing humans.

DAVID: Umpteenth time: God chose to evolve us and history shows the pattern of evolution God created as He finally reached the design of humans, His final goal. Each aspect of evolution has been explained to you with rational theories of God's reasons.

Umpteenth time: If God exists, he chose to evolve ALL life forms, and the pattern of evolution is of thousands of different twigs and branches, only one of which led to humans. You have never ever managed to offer a rational theory to explain why a God whose ONLY goal was to design humans proceeded to design thousands of now extinct life forms that had no connection with humans. The only reason you have ever given is that they all provide food for one another, which does not mean that they were all “part of the goal of evolving [= specially designing] humans.”

dhw: … what is all this nonsense about allegory and symbolism?

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

dhw: There is no allegory in the statement that he may have thought patterns etc. similar to ours though they may not be the same. They may be the same. Nobody knows. You build your theory on what you think are his thought patterns and logic, and your theory is illogical by human standards and maybe by his standards too.

DAVID: Each statement I make about God is allegorical.

You just keep repeating the word as if it provided an explanation. Do you or do you not believe that your God exists, that he had one purpose (humans), that he specially designed every life form etc.? If so, what does God’s existence, purpose etc. symbolize?

dhw: You agree that my alternatives are logical, and my logic may be the same as his. Nobody knows.

DAVID: Not what I said about you. What I have granted is your humanized God reaches conclusions logically based on His humanized personality. Your God is not my God as I perceive God.

I do not have God reaching conclusions. I offer alternative interpretations of his possible nature based on the facts of life’s history. Your own humanized version of God (“My God is fully purposeful, knows exactly what He is doing and never deviates from his goals”) when applied to life’s history results in the absurd conclusion that he never deviated from his goal of designing humans, which he achieved by designing thousands and thousands of life forms and econiches and natural wonders, 99% of which had no connection with humans.

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

dhw: You are playing with the word image. An allegory is indeed an image: The character of Giant Despair in Pilgrim’s Progress symbolizes despair. “In his own image” does not symbolize anything; it means that we resemble him in some way.

DAVID: Yes, in some way. Allegorical meaning.

“In some way” is not an allegory. Please give us your definition of the word.

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

dhw: I’d count myself as 50/50, but it doesn’t matter if you think I’m 40/60 or whatever, so long as you don’t pretend that this has a bearing on the logic of my arguments.

DAVID: The logic of your arguments must start with the kind of God you envision.

Wrong again. The logic of my arguments starts with the world as I see it. I then try to extrapolate what kind of God - if he exists - might have created that world. You, on the other hand, start with a fixed image of your God and try to impose it on life’s history. “Theodicy” is a prime example. You pretend that you do not “humanize” him, but you hope to find an explanation of “bad” bacteria and viruses that will show his “good” intentions, and you even have him trying to find ways of correcting the errors resulting from the system of life that he designed.