Theodicy: solution lies in definition of God (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 06, 2021, 09:03 (1143 days ago) @ David Turell

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dhw: As usual, you try to forget your own certainty that your God enjoys creation and watches his creations with interest.

DAVID: Your usual distortion of my thoughts about God. Not certain, just guesses!!! Offered in reply to your questioning.

dhw: Sorry, but I keep a record of certain statements and quote them, as follows:
“Back to theodicy” 9 March 2021: “God is in the business of creation and enjoys doing it or I think he would stop.”
“Theodicy” 7 December 2020: I’m sure He likes what he creates, and that He is satisfied in His results as the inventor.
“Theodicy”, 20 October 2020: “I’m sure he sees what is going on with his own level of interest, unknown to us.”

DAVID: All guesswork, nothing more. Nothing is really sure about God. Not firmly believed.

Of course nothing is sure about God – not even his existence. But you have very firm beliefs, and when you say you are sure about something, I can’t help feeling that you believe it. Except when I use your beliefs as the basis of a theory, and then all of a sudden you are not sure. I wish you would apply the same uncertainty to your illogical anthropocentric theory of evolution.

DAVID: He designed evolution with direct intentionality to reach the production of sapiens.

dhw: His direct intentionality led to his designing life forms that had no connection with his intention, and that apparently is logical. The various alternative approaches I have proposed are all logical, according to you, and that makes them all totally illogical.[…]

DAVID: Food supply is essential. Your theories fit your style of a humanized form of God who does not have defined purposeful goals.

See above for a possible purpose (enjoyment of creation and interesting things to watch). Food supply is essential to all forms of life, not just sapiens. The only purposeful goal you offer is that of designing homo sapiens and his food, and you have no idea why he would - according to you - also have individually designed countless extinct life forms that had no connection with humans.

dhw: …. Are you saying that your God individually designed every life form, econiche, strategy, natural wonder etc. just so that the animals etc. could eat one another before he designed humans?

DAVID: Yes. And then we eat them.

How can we eat animals that no longer exist?

DAVID: […] It is simple to accept that God chose to evolve us in necessary stages. All evolution is connected in branching stages.

It is indeed simple for any evolutionist to accept that ALL life forms branched out in stages from earlier life forms. That does not mean that all extinct life forms plus food, most of which had no connection with humans plus food, existed only “as part of the goal of evolving [= designing] humans” plus food.