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

by dhw, Tuesday, May 30, 2023, 13:41 (331 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Theodicy is not confined to molecules! You object to my theories because they involve a God who is not all-knowing. Neither my list nor the Adam and Eve story is limited to molecules – an all-knowing God would have known that all the evils of the world would result from his work, and since he is also all-powerful, one could only assume that he wanted what he created. You do him no favours with your “all-knowing” theory.

DAVID: With free will God knew evil would occur. He knew errors would occur in a free moving molecular system of life. But that is the only system that creates life that He knows of.

Once more: theodicy is not confined to molecules, and I am pointing out to you the kind of God you are creating if you insist on his being all-knowing. I have now bolded the reason for this exchange, and the summary, since you have ignored it.

DAVID: I don't have to know how or why He made his choices of a creation mechanism. He chose a cumbersome system (from a human point of view) to produce a magnificent human brain, the most complex item in the universe. My God knew exactly what He was doing with His goal in plain sight for Him.

dhw: And that apparently explains why he chose to design 99 out of 100 species that had no connection with us and our brain, although he was perfectly capable of designing us and our brain directly. All my alternative theories culminate in the human brain, without being messy, cumbersome or inefficient.

DAVID: So now you accept evolution as totally efficient?

dhw: Efficiency depends on the purpose! You say it’s inefficient because you insist that your God was forced to create species that were irrelevant to his purpose. If God doesn’t exist, then the question of efficiency doesn’t even arise. If God does exist and his purpose was to create a free-for-all, or to experiment with new ideas, or to experiment with a view to finding a particular formula that would produce a particular species (plus food), then yes, in all cases he got what he wanted without having to do anything he didn’t want to do. I’d call that efficient.

DAVID: And I would call that a powerless very humanized form of an imagined God.
And:
An all-knowing God knows what will work and what cannot work and choses the best approach always.

A God who achieves what he wants to achieve is apparently powerless and very humanized, whereas an all-powerful, all-knowing God who designs a messy, inefficient method to achieve his purpose, has no control over the environmental conditions which limit his scope for speciation, knows he is creating all kinds of evil, and is powerless to prevent mistakes that arise from molecules that mess up their folding etc. “always chooses the best approach”. I shudder to think what the worst approach would be. NB in anticipation of your usual complaint: This is not a criticism of your God, but of your theories which lead you to this image of your God.