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

by dhw, Wednesday, July 12, 2023, 11:58 (498 days ago) @ David Turell

Theodicy

DAVID: What God desired to create is what was required in the biochemistry of life. He wished us to have freewill but knew there would be bad apples as a consequence. Freewill is an overall good for us. It is a tradeoff.

Murderous bacteria and viruses, robbery, rape, murder, war, floods, famines etc. were required in the biochemistry of life, were they? Yes, your all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God knew that all of these would spring from his creations, but he went ahead (a) because the suffering of millions of people didn’t matter, and/or (b) because he wanted to set us a challenge (you can’t think why), and (c) he created free will because he didn’t want to know what would happen next (“Free will means humans producing unexpected results”) but he is all-knowing and therefore knew what would happen next. What a mess!

dhw: My question is why your all-good God is not intervening to put an end to all the suffering he has created.

DAVID: He most likely sees it as I do.

dhw: So he watches millions of people suffering, as he knew they would, but that doesn’t matter because lots of other people are OK. That makes him callous in the extreme, and possibly even sadistic. You may be right, of course. But in that case, if you were one of the millions who are suffering, I doubt if you would call him all-good.

DAVID: Where do you find you enormous statistics of suffering against an eight billion population?

Why “against”? Figures vary, but approximately 10 million people die of cancer every year, and approximately 100 million people are homeless refugees. In 2021 there were 21,570 murders and 144,300 rapes in your country alone. But apparently none of them matter to you or your God, because we should only look at all the happy people.

dhw: Your new theory, however, is that he created evil in order to provide us humans with a challenge. I asked what his purpose might have been.

DAVID: That is a purpose.

So God said: “I’ll create evil in order to challenge humans” – but he didn’t have any purpose for doing so. However, see your next comment:

DAVID: I agree God would be bored by Eden, as a theoretical consideration.

dhw: But you cannot bring yourself to believe that he might have created life and evil in order to avoid being bored.

dhw: This “theoretical consideration” supports the theory that your God deliberately created the whole of evolution as a free-for-all, because he wanted to create something that would be of interest to him, and watching the unexpected is infinitely more interesting than watching something you already know will happen. It can also absolve him from the accusation that he deliberately created evil. If the results of his invention were unexpected, he cannot have been all-knowing and cannot have foreseen the evil that has arisen from the self-interest which drives the struggle for survival.

DAVID: A God with His head in the sand is not a God in any form. A very weak way to excuse evil.

It is you who put your head in the sand! Evil doesn’t matter, apparently, because there is more good than evil! I would say that a God who wishes to avoid boredom, and so deliberately creates a free-for-all which he can watch with interest, is not putting his head in the sand. But that does lead to the question of non-intervention, to which I have offered several alternative answers.

David's theory of evolution

dhw: you have no idea why your God chose to design 99 out of 100 life forms which had no connection with the single purpose you impose on him. […] your theory makes no sense to you, but still you cling to it. A blatant example of what, on another thread, you call “preconceived bias”.

DAVID: No, simply a faith in God.

dhw: It is not simply faith in God, but faith in a nonsensical theory about what God might have intended and done. All the alternatives I have offered you include God as their creator.

DAVID: A humanized God who has no idea what might result from His creations.

You claim that your preconceived bias in favour of a theory that makes no sense to you is derived from your faith in God. No it isn’t. It’s derived from your faith in a theory that makes no sense to you. Your refusal to consider other theories does not make your own theory any the less nonsensical.

DAVID: God is an excellent designer using a cumbersome stepwise evolutionary method.[…]

dhw: As with theodicy, you put on your blinkers and insist on seeing nothing but the good. And yet it is you yourself who insist on the nonsensical theory which has your all-powerful God designing 99 out of 100 species that have no connection with his purpose, and it is you yourself who label his design messy, cumbersome and inefficient. Stop dodging!

DAVID: No dodge. I accept God as He is. God is good.

How do you know what God “is”? You have him deliberately creating evil, and that means he is good, and you have him messily, cumbersomely and inefficiently designing evolution, and that means he is an excellent designer. The logic of Wonderland.