Return to David's theory of evolution PARTS ONE & TWO (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, April 09, 2023, 15:23 (377 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Since when is God conceived as not all-knowing? This is a distinct contradiction to what most religion believe. That version leads you to create your very humanized God.

dhw: Since when did most religions inform us that your God deliberately designed 99 out of 100 species that were irrelevant to his sole purpose of creating us and our food, and had no control over the environment which dictated what life forms he could/could not design whenever conditions changed? And how many religions inform us that his method of achieving his one and only goal was inefficient, cumbersome and messy? Since when has your panentheism and your theory of evolution become the norm in most religions? As for omniscience, we have spent hours, and theologians (think of Augustine versus Pelagius) have spent centuries, debating the two great issues of free will (linked to predestination) and theodicy, both encapsulated by the story of Adam and Eve. If your God knows everything, why did he create the serpent and the tree of knowledge of good and evil - knowing perfectly well that Eve would be tempted - but then blame Eve and Adam for eating the fruit? It’s very generous of you to credit me with inventing a brand new approach to your God by challenging his omniscience, but Messrs Augustine and Pelagius started it all, and Whitehead and process theologians came up with the proposal that God is mutable (which implies learning, which contradicts omniscience).

I had to look up Augustine and Pelagius. Thank you for the education. I follow Thomist thinking within Catholicism. The Bible, Adam and Eve are not part of my theology, nor Does Whitehead impress me. I follow the Catholic philosopher Ed Feser for some of his thinking. But I have my on brand of theism I follow.

Your bolded mantra above is a distortion of the fact that evolution occurred, Raup pointed out the necessary survival rate showing it was cumbersome. As the creator God ran the show because He wanted to.

DAVID (re the 99% of irrelevant species) : They were designed as part of an evolutionary system that is historical and, in my view, created by God. They were absolutely necessary as part of screening and culling.

dhw: Yes, your God – if he exists – created the historical system of evolution. But why was screening and culling (i.e. the creation and destruction of species irrelevant to his one and only purpose) necessary for your all-powerful, all-knowing God to create the only species he wanted to create? You have no idea. It makes no sense. Therefore there must have been another reason for his creation of the 99%. I have offered you three logical reasons, and two of them even incorporate your idea of his purpose (a being with thought patterns and emotions like his own).

DAVID: You strain to make your imitation God really God-like, but the effort falls short, as I view God. Evolution as it is, makes perfect sense to me as I accept God as perfect in what He chooses to do.

dhw: You keep admitting that your theory does NOT make perfect sense to you because it makes sense only to God, and he is certainly not perfect in what YOU choose for him to do. because his method of fulfilling what you think is his purpose is, according to you, inefficient, cumbersome and messy. Stop flapping around behind these vague general protestations.

I do not perceive the warts you apply to my God. God evolved us by the historical system we know. As you pointed out years ago, using evolution to create us does not make as much sense as direct creation. We are exploring that issue now.