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

by dhw, Sunday, July 09, 2023, 10:34 (293 days ago) @ David Turell

Theodicy

dhw: If we are asking how and why an all-good, all-powerful God created evil, the proportion of good to evil is irrelevant. According to you, your God did not “allow” evil: he deliberately created the murderous bacteria, viruses and humans knowing in advance the suffering they would cause. The question is why, and now that you have dropped your first approach (evil doesn’t matter), your second is that he wants to challenge us. Why? Is it a game?

DAVID: Not a game but having us use our brains to dampen the effects. Big brains for a reason.

And so the reason for your all-good, all-powerful God deliberately designing evil with all the resultant suffering is to make us use our big brains. Now please give us a reason why he has deliberately created this “challenge”. Once upon a time, you thought he had created us because he wanted us to recognize his wonderful work, and maybe form a relationship with us. Do you think we are supposed to admire his wonderful, murderous bacteria and viruses and big-brained baddy humans, and thank him for giving us goodies the big brains to fight against the evils and suffering he has deliberately created?

DAVID: Free will means humans producing unexpected results.

dhw: So if that is what he wanted from us, why do you refuse to even contemplate the possibility that he might have created the process of evolution as a free-for-all because he wanted unexpected results?

DAVID: Back to a God blind to the future. Why don't you like a purposeful creator?

You have just said your God gave humans free will so that the results would be unexpected. Still wearing my theist hat, I have proposed that the same desire for “unexpected results” may explain the whole history of evolution, which presents us with a vast variety of life forms that have come and gone. His purpose: enjoyment of creation (whether direct or indirect) and the desire to create things that he will find interesting. This ties in with your own certainty that he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations. Now will you please answer my question.

dhw: But there are two separate questions here: why did your all-good God create evil (or why did he create a world of “challenges” in which good battles with evil), and why doesn’t he intervene now that he sees the chaos he has created? You have dodged the first question, and I have offered a list of possible responses to the second.

DAVID: I think the time for an intervening G0d is over.

Please tell us why.

DAVID: For the first question, answered above, the big brain is there for a reason, and we can mitigate evil in many ways.

And what do you think might be his reason for creating evil and creating our big brains to produce evil of their own as well as to fight against evil? Please don’t forget that your all-good, all-powerful God is also all-purposeful.

David's theory of evolution

DAVID: Since God chose to develop humans in a stepwise fashion through evolution, the 99.9% culled out are absolutely necessary.

dhw: In your nonsensical theory, the problem is not the culling but the deliberate creation of 99 unnecessary organisms which have to be culled!

In order to dodge this argument, you returned to the theodicy problem.

DAVID: God's reason is He wants us to use our big brain. A Garden of Eden existence is boring. Life is meant to be challenging.

Boring for whom? If we continue to use the Eden metaphor, why do you think your all-knowing God deliberately created the serpent, knowing the havoc it would cause? Who “meant” life to be challenging, with all its diseases and wars etc.? Your God is interested in his creations. You have him also wanting unexpected results. Put the two together, and you have a logical explanation for the history of evolution, a possible explanation for theodicy, and a clear purpose: A Garden of Eden would be boring for your God.

NB All of your negative views concerning your God’s inefficiency as a designer and his deliberate, callous (possibly sadistic) creation of evil and its terrible consequences may be correct. My alternative explanations are no less theoretical than your own, and in some cases can also be interpreted as negative. We don’t even know if your God exists, let alone how he thinks.