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

by dhw, Friday, April 30, 2021, 12:39 (1301 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Unless living things eat they die. I know you eat every day.

dhw: Undeniable. How does that prove that your God created every single life form and menu as “part of the goal of evolving [= specially designing] humans” when you know perfectly well that 99% of them had no connection with humans?

DAVID: The connection is God evolved all of them.

So how does that prove that ALL of them were “part of the goal of evolving [= specially designing] humans?” Why design a thousand branches of the bush if you only want to design one?

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

DAVID: When we use human descriptive terms about God and His thinking, since He is no human, they must be allegorical.

dhw: […] Please give me a definition that will explain how terms such as “purposeful, in control, knows what he is doing” can be “allegorical”.

DAVID: I use the word allegorical only in its symbolic sense as it relates to discussions of God.

We now have the word “allegorical” being used allegorically. Please define what you mean by “allegorical”.

DAVID: Your conclusions of God's nature are distinctly not mine. That humans are here as a result of God's works is not an absurd conclusion, and deny your distortions of history as created by God.

dhw: The usual dodge. If God exists, then the fact that ALL life forms were or are here as a result of his works is a perfectly logical conclusion. It is not a logical conclusion that humans were his only goal if you insist that he specially designed thousands and thousands of other, now extinct life forms that had no connection with humans or our food supply. Please stop all this silly dodging.

DAVID: Please stop your silly twisting. All of evolution is/was God's work to produce his final goal of humans.

The silly twisting is entirely yours. Taken from “Miscellany”: “I cannot know His reasons for His chose of evolving us from bacteria, answered many times.” You have no idea why he evolved us from bacteria, and you have no idea why he found it necessary to achieve his goal (do his “work”) of evolving us (i.e. specially designing us) by first specially designing vast numbers of life forms, 99% of which had no connection with us except that he designed them. Whenever I ask for an explanation, you come up with dodges like the one above, or the great non sequitur that everyone has to eat.

Our personal backgrounds:

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: I do not see God as human in any way.

dhw: Stop kidding yourself. The only way you can justify such a statement is by viewing God as a totally featureless blob, whereas you believe he is conscious, purposeful, in control, knows what he’s doing etc. And are you now denying that you hope the future will reveal his good intentions in personally designing “bad” bugs?

DAVID: All God's works are for the good. God is not a blob, but since you insist upon one definition we must view him symbolically.

I don’t insist on one definition! You do! According to you, at one moment your God is a non-human blob with no human attributes. But then he is no longer a blob with no human attributes. We learn that everything he does is for “the good”, and he had just one purpose – to create us, presumably for some special “good” – always knew exactly what he wanted, was always in total control, and even specially designed what we call “bad” bacteria and viruses, but these too must be for the good. But any other human attributes are unacceptable to you, and so your God becomes a non-human blob again.