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

by dhw, Wednesday, June 07, 2023, 08:49 (535 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: So with your God the same evil exists as we are discussing with my God.

dhw: Of course it does. I have just said so […].

DAVID: But because He experiments, allows free-for-alls, etc. the same evil that appears is not His fault. Somehow He has nothing to do with its appearance? It appears under His watch, He is responsible for it, for allowing it. Just like my God.

dhw: I’m fascinated by your determined efforts to portray your God as inefficient and sadistic! There is a huge difference between a being who deliberately creates evil and one who creates something good, without knowing in advance that it will result in something bad.

DAVID: My God created evil just as you describe below in your examples of unexpected side effects. Your unknowing guy doesn't anticipate the bad results, but my God knows they will appear and puts in many safeguard mechanisms which you never recognize or comment upon, until finally below.

I have repeatedly pointed out that your so-called safeguards are woefully inadequate, since millions continue to suffer from the consequences of your God’s inefficiency and lack of control. The problem of evil is not solved by focusing solely on the good!

DAVID: Your unknowing God is somehow innocent of the bad things He has done because He is ignorant of them? Nonsense.

Once again, you take a pride in finding your God guilty. You may be right. But you have skipped a stage in my theories. He does not know the evil consequences IN ADVANCE. You then go on to ignore my examples and my questions concerning good intentions and bad consequences. I’ll repeat just one: Do you think Sir Walter Raleigh, who popularized smoking in this country, is in any way guilty of the millions of deaths now known to have been caused by smoking?

DAVID: Another point I've made is I believe God chose the only system for life that would work even if it had some bad side effects. An all-knowing God would know that.

So your all-knowing, all-purposeful God said to himself at the very beginning: “I want to create H. sapiens (plus food), and there’s only one way to do it, which is to design 99 out of 100 species that have no connection with H. sapiens and his food, and it will result in all kinds of natural disasters and nasty bacteria and viruses which I shall try but generally fail to control, and I shall let humans do whatever they like, although I know they will create all kinds of evil – but that is the only way I can do it, and I am perfect.” You may be right. I hope you’re not.

DAVID: How was your God going to invent life? By experimentation? And His experiments came up with the same system. So it must be the only one available.

We are not talking here about inventing life, but about evolution and evil, and you are confusing the system with the result! We have the same result: the history of life as we know it. You interpret that history as being a success (the arrival of H. sapiens), although the system he used also produced 99% of failures, and the deliberate creation of evil. My interpretation of the history is success through alternative systems: 2 x targeted experimentation, and 1 targeted free-for-all, all of which successfully provide him with the enjoyment of creation and an ever changing variety of interesting organisms and events to watch. I have no objections at all, though, to your proposal that he specially created humans (as in my first theory) because he wanted them to recognize him and his work. But I do not find such self-interest in any way reprehensible or unnatural.

(The “Neanderthal experimentation” post repeats the above arguments, so we can drop it.)

DAVID: The system cannot be perfect: note our cells a constantly dividing and you and I have lived to be ancient, so it works for most folks. I see the glass relatively full, and you complain that it isn't full.

We are discussing the problem of evil. It is not solved by pretending there is no problem.