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

by dhw, Wednesday, July 19, 2023, 12:08 (283 days ago) @ David Turell

Theodicy

DAVID: […] A God who cannot foresee the future of His creations is an intellectually blinded distortion of a true God.

dhw: […] You agree that God would be bored by Eden, and you agree that free will means humans producing unexpected results, but you refuse to link the two observations together: a God who does not want to be bored may have deliberately created the whole history of life to produce unexpected results, which would be far less boring than results which he already knows in advance. This is not “intellectual blindness”, and you have no more idea than I have of what constitutes a “true” God.

DAVID: Only humans get bored. This comment about your God reflects your humanizing of Him.

A week ago, you wrote: “I agree God would be bored by Eden, as a theoretical consideration.” All our discussions – including that concerning the existence of your God – are theoretical considerations, and so you agree that your God could be bored by Eden. Please stop contradicting yourself.

DAVID: It does not exonerate Him from blame.

dhw: Your usual self-contradictory view that an all-good God deliberately created beings he knew would commit evil (as a challenge to the goodies)– and so is to “blame” for all the evil and its resultant suffering, and yet at the same time you “blame” humans for using their free will to commit evil deeds (as below) and thus try to exonerate God.

DAVID: Yes, free will allowed humans to be evil which is the same result as Walter Raleigh and smoking. And yes, God knew.

The point of the Walter Raleigh analogy is that he did NOT know that smoking would have “evil results”, and so we cannot blame him. Your all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God designed humans in full knowledge of the fact that they would commit evil acts, and that makes him responsible for evil.

DAVID: […] The semi-uncontrolled biochemical system of life is the best that can be. Only an all-knowing God could find it. Viruses and bacteria must be a part of it, doing much good and also some bad. Free will made evil people not God. I still follow Dayenu, it is enough. My mole hill is your Everest.

dhw: A complete muddle. One moment your all-powerful God is in complete control of evolution, but now he is only in semi-control...

DAVID: Dashing off again and misunderstanding that the current daily activities of bugs follows from their freedom to act. Evolution not involved.

Even today, bugs both good and bad mutate in order to combat new threats to their existence. Of course evolution is “involved”. And according to you, your all-powerful God is incapable of stopping them. He also deliberately created humans to act independently of his control, and according to you he has no control over the environmental changes which demand or allow organisms to speciate into other life forms. It is you have introduced the term “semi-uncontrolled”.

dhw: ...and he is incapable of designing a Garden of Eden, although he could have done so but a Garden of Eden would have been boring for him. See above for my version of free will exonerating God from blame, your denial that it exonerates him, and now your belief that free will does exonerate him (“Free will made evil people not God”.) And the problem of theodicy is not solved by pretending that evil is only a molehill which we should ignore.

DAVID: Not ignore, but accept it as a tiny part of God's works, Dayenu.

You do not solve the problem of theodicy by pretending that evil is only a molehill!

David’s theory of evolution

DAVID: You are still denying God chose to evolve us from bacteria. 99.9% are required to be lost.
And:
DAVID: 99.9% had to disappear if evolution is a method of culling to achieve better results. God chose to evolve us. You cannot deny that point. All connected

I am convinced that Darwin was right, and all life including ourselves has evolved from the earliest cells, whether God exists or not. I agree that 99% or 99.9% are lost. I do not agree that an all-powerful, all-knowing God would have started out with the one and only purpose of designing us plus food but despite his omnipotence and omniscience, and despite your belief that he was perfectly capable of creating phenotypes “de novo”, found himself “required” to design 99 out of 100 species that had no connection with his purpose. You can’t understand it either. You even denigrate your God by insisting that his design system is messy, cumbersome and inefficient. I have offered you three alternative explanations for the 99% which make perfect sense to you, but which you reject on the absurd grounds that in some way they “humanise” your God, although you agree that we reflect him and have thought patterns in common with his own.