Theodicy: the 'good' view of viruses (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, November 11, 2021, 18:45 (1106 days ago) @ dhw

Under “sensing autonomic activity”
dhw: You keep confining the discussion to molecules, and you keep insisting that your all-powerful God was forced to create an imperfect system because of the conditions which he himself created. The “bad” of life is not confined to free-floating molecules! In the rest of this post, you continue to ignore the overall problem of the “bad”, and cling to your molecules:

DAVID: But all the errors are molecular!!! I fully believe God produced the only system that can work and produce life. Bad actors in bacteria and viruses are 'bad' when acting in the wrong places, part of the freedom of action they have.

dhw: Why must I repeat the fact that the problem of theodicy is not confined to molecules, or even to bad viruses and bacteria? Some of us regard natural disasters as “bad”, animals killing others for food, the cut-throat struggle for survival, self-interest culminating perhaps in all the “bad” we humans get up to - theft, murder, rape, war… How could a first-cause, all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God have created a system that he knew would lead to all of this "bad"?

'Bad' is a human interpretation of facts. Animals have to kill each other to eat. Animals like humans have free will. God did not want automatons. Without earthquakes no continental subduction, no life. You don't recognize the trade outs to have Earth like it is. Lightning kills but those storms produce needed rain. I could go on. Humans can handle these challenges and that is enough. How do you know God is all-good? I don't.