Theodicy: solution lies in definition of God (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, October 15, 2021, 16:31 (1133 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: […] how does his inability to create a perfect system make him less “humanized” than a God who deliberately chose to create a system that gave cells the freedom to do their own designing, complete with the capacity for making “errors”? […]

DAVID: Again your twisted version of my theory: God knew the ONLY system that would work could produce molecular errors. So He had editor systems in place, that work largely perfectly. As for your mamby-pamby God in the bold, answered many times: my God knows what He wants and does it.

dhw: It is the errors that form part of the theodicy problem. I’m always amazed at your knowledge of what your all-powerful God can and can’t do, and what he wants and doesn’t want to do. I’m doubly amazed at your response when I point out that your God may have deliberately produced precisely this system plus “errors” because that is what he wanted to produce (not what circumstances forced him to produce). You continue to ignore my bolded question concerning “humanization”, and now you claim that a God who gets precisely what he wants is “namby-pamby”!

it is your imagined God who is n-p even if you point out the weird purpose as reasonable, which for me isn't. I did answer the bold with an answer you reject, so now I didn't answer???

DAVID: History reeks of purpose. He made a universe fine-tuned for life. He didn't have to. He designed an Earth with perfect conditions for life. He bothered only because He wanted life to survive. And as the only consciousness around He decided to add an organism with consciousness. The last step we debate as to His motives. Now we are at all guesswork, with all the possible motives previously listed, so take your pick. I'm content to accept God did what He wished.

If he exists, I have no quarrel with any of this. I simply propose that the vast variety of life forms, including those that had nothing to do with humans, is what he wished, and what you call the “errors” in the system are also what he wished.

He did not wish for the errors. He had to accept them for life to exist, a major consideration you ignore.

dhw: For some reason you think this makes him “namby-pamby”.

It is your imagined form of God who is namby-pamby

dhw: Your guess in relation to the former is that you have no idea why he would have designed them all when his only wish was to design humans plus food, and in relation to the latter your guess is that despite his all-powerfulness, he “had to” produce the errors he didn’t want, and did his best to “edit” them, though he sometimes failed. For some reason you think this “humanizes” him less than a God who designs what he wants to design.

Corrections: 1) His choice of how to create is His choice, which I accept, without guessing at His reasons. 2) God did not 'produce' errors. he had to accept the unstoppable mistakes ad price of creating living organisms, accepting this system is the only one possible. 3) a non-humanized God knows exactly what He wishes and does it without any human reasoning.