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

by David Turell , Wednesday, June 28, 2023, 18:14 (304 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Evil is a tiny part of the dog-eat-dog world God gave us.

dhw: You continue to minimize the extent of evil in your desperate attempt to avoid the question of why an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God would have produced it.

I'm tired of explaining God knew evil would appear with human free will. It is human responsibility to deal with it. It is a tradeoff in that it makes us more complete and enhanced humans. That God knew His systems of life could not fully control molecular mechanical mistakes is shown by His putting in editing systems. God also know this is the only system that would work.

DAVID: You prefer to think of it as a battle for survivability which is a correct view, but not as Darwin viewed it, a driver of evolution. Everyone must eat, just like your 'humans plus food' pejorative, which shows us the emptiness of your approach. Eating constantly is imperative.

dhw: Do you honestly believe I am not aware that everyone must eat? The “pejorative” concerns your illogical theory that your God’s one and only purpose was to design us and our food, and therefore he proceeded to design 99% of species and foods that had no connection with us. Stop dodging! (See also the “Miscellany” thread.) And of course the battle for survival drives evolution: every species has evolved different ways of adapting to or exploiting new conditions in order to survive! Those that cannot do so become extinct.

Which is what happened to 99.9% as a natural result. That God decided to evolve us was His decision. I cannot tell you His reasoning.

dhw: Please explain why you consider the 99% to have been failures, and why you consider your God’s method of achieving his one and only goal to have been messy, cumbersome and inefficient.

It is obviously not direct creation, which is efficient. Failure to survive is a failure to survive.

dhw: But if his purpose was to create a dog-eat-dog world, the 99% of losses were the direct consequence of the free-for-all he intended to create from the beginning. Whether he designed the 99% directly, or gave them the ability to design themselves, makes no difference. Dog-eat-dog, producing an ever changing variety of “dogs”, was the purpose, and so every dog was relevant to that purpose. Now ask yourself what was the purpose of dog-eat-dog, if it was not to provide enjoyment of creation and interest in the ever changing products of creation.

DAVID: Totally misses the point. Whether animal or vegetable, all must have constant nutrition, which creates constant competition.

dhw: Correct, and blindingly obvious. And if God exists, I think we can assume that it was his intention to create the dog-eat-dog battle for survival, as above. You have now told us that he had two purposes: to create the battle, and to create humans plus food. So please tell us why you think he wanted to create a battle which would result in the loss of 99 out of 100 species, bearing in mind that these had no connection with his other purpose.

You keep asking the same unanswerable question, His choice of evolving us. No point in asking if there is no answer.