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

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 25, 2023, 16:39 (485 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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.

As usual our disagreement relates to God's possible personality patterns. An all-knowing God knows the future, so how can He be interested in something He knows will happen? In TV dramas the writers keep up interest by writing in the unexpected events. In re-reading the script I doubt the author finds enjoyment at a viewer's level.

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.

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

That God chose to evolve us is an entirely reasonable position.

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.

dhw: 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.

Please try to remember good bacteria and viruses are good unless they get out of their proper doing-good environments. Like free will is a trade-off, so are good bugs that turn bad. God designed the only system of life that can work. Remember He is considered all-knowing.