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

by dhw, Thursday, June 08, 2023, 09:18 (324 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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: Where do you find support for your offhand 'millions are suffering' while billions are just fine.

What world are you living in? Each year approx 12.7 million people discover they have cancer and approx. 7.6 million people die from the disease. Do you never watch the news? According to you, your all-knowing God would have known in advance that today, as a result of his knowingly inventing the human mind’s propensity for evil, somewhere around 100 million people would be fleeing the death and destruction caused by the human-made evils of war and civil conflicts in places like Ukraine, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen etc. .And he would have known in advance about the suffering caused by all the floods and famines. This is the problem of theodicy, which you think you can solve by shutting your eyes to the MILLIONS of people suffering.

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

dhw: 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: Your distorted God ignorant of consequences is like no other God I've ever heard of. In the one form of life both Gods have given us trillions of cell divisions occur daily without error, as some are automatically corrected. A rare mistake happens. […]

Evil is not confined to faulty cell divisions!!! Why don’t you answer my question?

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.

dhw: 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: Again theoretically distorting how much good and evil exist in the world.

Once again: The problem of theodicy - why an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful God would create evil - is not solved by telling us there is more good than evil.

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: God did not directly produce evil. You've agreed to that.
And under "Madagascar":
DAVID: 'Sadism' is your invention as you negatively attack my God. God produced humans who can create evil, and a living system that can make evil through molecular mistakes. Not a direct creation of evil.

Of course your God did not perform the evil deeds himself, but according to you, he produced life forms which he knew would do evil. If, for instance, he creates a virus which he knows will kill me, I reckon that’s pretty direct. And sadistic - or at the very best, indifferent to the suffering he causes.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Just very human-like for an imagined God.

Your usual silly fall-back on “humanization”, though you agree that the Creator might well have thought patterns and emotions like those of his creations (and you are certain that these include enjoyment and interest), and it’s you who have proposed that he might want our recognition.