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

by dhw, Tuesday, July 25, 2023, 08:52 (277 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Apology. Always put 'my' in front of God in my statements.

dhw: Thank you. Now my question to you is why your God, who according to you enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, cannot possibly create things because he wants to enjoy creating things that will interest him.

DAVID: I view my God as having distinct visons of His future creations, purposely proceeding, and not for the purpose of self-enjoyment or self-interest.

I know that is your view. And as usual, you hide behind vague generalisations instead of facing up to the irrationality of the details: the one purpose you have him pursuing is the design of us and our food; his distinct vision entails designing 99 out of 100 species that have no connection with the one purpose you have him pursuing – a method you yourself ridicule as messy, cumbersome and inefficient. Your distinct vision sees him as all-powerful and all-knowing and all-good, but he deliberately creates evil as a challenge. And you have categorically stated that you are sure he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, but your vision is too blinkered to imagine that he might want to create things out of enjoyment and interest.

DAVID: Your God's thought patterns are very human.

dhw: Wrong way round. Since he is supposed to have created us and we reflect him, our human thought patterns are very godlike. We purposefully create things out of enjoyment and interest, just as he does.

DAVID: How we reflect God's personality is a very tenuous subject and doesn't allow your declarative statement above.

It is you who agreed that we reflect him, and since he got here first, that has to be the order of creation: his characteristics are passed onto us, so our characteristics are godlike. And it is you who expressed certainty about his enjoyment and his interest. But of course, you are right – even God’s existence is a tenuous subject, as are his nature, purpose, methods and thoughts. That is why we can only theorize and then test the feasibility of our theories. See above for the irrationality of your own.

DAVID: God evolving us demonstrates His method of choice.

dhw: Agreed, if God exists. However, “evolve” in most people’s minds is not synonymous with “individually design”, and you always omit the fact that every other life form extant and extant also evolved.

DAVID: God's form of stages of designed organisms is Darwin's evolution.

dhw: I’m delighted to hear you supporting Darwin’s theory of organisms developing in stages, but I don’t recall Darwin telling us that every stage of every organism extant and extinct was individually designed by God for the sole purpose of specially designing us and our food, although 99% of them had no connection with us and our food.

DAVID: We both know Darwin only mentioned God as a means of covering His agnosticism.

I have no idea what this part of our discussion is about. You have accepted Darwin’s theory of evolution in stages. His theory also allows for the existence of God.

DAVID: I view God as creator of reality and therefore of the historical evolutionary process. It was His unforced method.

dhw: If God exists, I would also regard him as the creator of reality and of the historical evolutionary process. But I would not regard him as the messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer of a method which meant he had to design 99 out of 100 species for the sole purpose of designing us and our food. Will you please stop trying to hide the absurdity of your theories behind these perfectly acceptable generalisations.

DAVID: Stop distorting my view of God, who brilliantly designed all living forms is stages that resembled the way Darwin theorized about evolution.

And yet again you ignore the all-important and completely irrational part of your theory bolded above.

DAVID: Evil is a small partial byproduct of God's good works.

dhw: This “small byproduct” causes untold suffering, as your God knew it would. And one cannot solve the problem of theodicy by pretending there is no problem.

DAVID: I admit there is a problem. Evil exists.

dhw: Thank you. Perhaps you will also admit that your theory, which has him deliberately creating evil as a “challenge”, runs totally counter to the concept of an all-good God.

DAVID: See new article here about soil viruses at work.

Viruses are a vital component

DAVID: this huge descriptive study cannot be reduced to a size here. What it shows us is that there is a working macro-viral world at work in our soils and I assume improving their quality for vegetative fertility and productivity. This shows the vast population of viruses is working for the good. It answers theodicy criticisms of the existence of viruses.

No, it doesn’t. Two days ago you wrote: “I admit there is a problem. Evil exists.” Do you or do you not admit that there are viruses which cause great suffering, and according to you, your all-knowing God knew in advance that they would, and so his deliberate creation of such “evil” is part of the problem of theodicy. Your solutions so far appear to be (a) God is mostly good, so forget the evil, or (b) your God knowingly created evil, which can only mean he is not all-good.