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

by dhw, Friday, May 21, 2021, 13:43 (1280 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'm allowed to dodge, by honestly disagreeing with your interpretations. Your theistic approaches all fit a God personality I don't believe in. I call Him humanized. You don't like it but that is my view of your God. I try to interpret His underlying motives.

dhw: The dodging concerns exactly what you are doing here. Whenever I call attention to the illogicality of your theory (which is what I bolded earlier) that God’s sole purpose was to design humans and food supply, and therefore he designed millions of life forms and food supplies that had no connection with humans and our food supply, you switch to another subject – in this case my alternative theories.

DAVID: I don't switch. Your theories are what you use to challenge mine.

No they are not. They are alternatives to yours. I challenge yours because it is illogical.

DAVID: I believe in God and have a specific set of logical attributes I apply to Him. I fully believe humans were His eventual goal in creating the universe, the Milky Way, this Earth which supports life. For me nothing about evolution in that context is illogical.

But as usual you have left out the next part of your theory, which is that in order to achieve his goal of creating humans, he first created “de novo” (an additional twist to your tale) millions of life forms, econiches, food supplies, strategies, lifestyles, natural wonders etc., 99% of which had no connection with humans. Your reply to this is:

DAVID: I don't know God's reasons for evolving us in the way He chose. But I accept that He did and the current bush of life can be explained logically. Just study history as God's works.

You admit that you can find no logical reason for your God evolving us in the way YOU choose. You do not accept that he did, you accept your own theory that that is what he did. We both regard it as history that humans evolved. But even if we accept the theory that God exists, it is NOT history that he designed every life form etc. “de novo”, and it is NOT history that every life form etc. that he specially designed was “part of the goal of evolving [= specially designing] humans.” You have agreed that the current bush of life has nothing to do with the past bushes of life, which again your God specially designed. Thank you for admitting that you can find no reasons why your God would have fulfilled his one and only purpose the way you think he did. Why won’t you leave it at that?

Under “bird brains”:
dhw: I keep agreeing that evolution is a continuum, but the continuum is the branching out from the roots of the bush to countless branches of life forms, only one of which presents a single line from bacteria to humans. The increasing complexity is not confined to that one line. Please stop leaving out those parts of your theory that make it illogical.

DAVID: Of course one line becomes humans. The bush supplies our huge population the required food we need, all logically presented before.

And yet again you leave out all the other lines and food bushes which, according to you, your God specially designed “de novo”, although they had no connection with humans or their food supply. This constant “editing” is how you repeatedly prolong the debate unnecessarily. As above, you’ve admitted you can’t find any logic to bind your different beliefs together, so please leave it at that.

Under: “Introducing the brain”

DAVID: Why do humans guess at God's designs before they have the full story?

I have taken this remark out of its limited context because it is so appropriate to this discussion. We do not have the “full story”, and so we theorize. And then we test the logic of the theories we have proposed. Why do we do it? Because we long to know the truth. And so you offer us your guess, but you “accept” (which should be "believe" - see above) that your guess is the truth, even though you have “no idea” why your God would have chosen the method you attribute to him in order to achieve the purpose you attribute to him.