Return to David's theory of evolution and theodicy (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, June 19, 2023, 13:29 (313 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I keep telling you the bad sided is a tiny side and the good side is the big side, but you keep your magnifying glasses where you wish them. Perhaps we should put aside all the bugs in your colon which help you in so many ways, as long as they stay at home. An example of the tradeoffs we live with necessarily.

And I keep telling you that you cannot solve the problem of theodicy – why an all-good and all-knowing God has created evil – by telling us that the good outweighs the bad.

DAVID: As for bacteria and viruses with free will, It doesn't exist.

You have told us categorically that cancer cells are intelligent, that molecules are “freewheeling”, and when they “ are free to act as well as humans with free will, bad mistakes will happen as well as deliberate evil”, and that bacteria can autonomously edit their own DNA, which of course means they are free to find ways of killing us. I can’t remember what you said about viruses. However, if your God did not programme them to kill us, I can only assume that they were left free to do what they wanted to do.

DAVID: The tiny incidents of biochemical errors remain and build into larger numbers, so you pounce on a collective, which does not represent the system's efficiency.

dhw: The biochemical errors throw doubt on your all-powerful God’s efficiency.

I should add that this is consistent with your view that his evolutionary method is messy, cumbersome and inefficient.

dhw: The deliberate creation of “evil” throws doubt on his all-goodness, and is compounded by his all-knowingness. Hence the problem of theodicy.

DAVID: Your unknowing God must have no problem since He is ignorant of them. Ridiculous.
And:
DAVID: Your God conduced the only evolutionary process we see. How do you explain His role? He produced the same result my God did in the same roundabout way. And they both had viruses and bacteria in the mix, but only your guy is OK because He was ignorant of what might turn out bad.

A gross over-simplification. Not being all-knowing is not the same as “unknowing”. You agreed that Walter Raleigh, who knew all about the pleasures of smoking, was not to blame for the millions of deaths caused by smoking. A God who invents “free-wheeling” life which initially is “good” should not be blamed for consequences he did not foresee. It is precisely your insistence on his all-knowingness that makes him “guilty”: your all-knowing, all-powerful God would only create what he wanted to create, and therefore he wanted to create evil.

But maybe you're right. Maybe he did want to create evil. After all, one can argue that good can only be appreciated if we have bad as well, and death is essential if there is to be room enough for new life, and why should God care about the suffering involved? That would certainly explain non-intervention. Then you can have your all-powerful God who deliberately creates evil. He may or may not know all the future details (human free will could suggest he doesn't), but not caring is not consistent with our concept of “all-good”. So this will strengthen the view of a deistic watcher (if he’s there) who enjoys creating and who watches with interest – callously at best, sadistically at worst.

The above makes sense. It’s only your rigidly blinkered view of God that makes no sense: what is “ridiculous” is a concept of him which makes him all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good (by our standards) and yet consciously creating evil – hence theodicy – and a concept which lumbers him with a single purpose which he achieves by deliberately designing 99 out of 100 species that are irrelevant to that purpose – viz your theory of evolution.