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

by David Turell , Sunday, August 13, 2023, 17:22 (258 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: […] evolution is a culling process which must result in a 99% loss. My God and your God both used it, although your purposeless God didn't know the endpoint.

dhw:[…]. As for evolution, we know that 99% became extinct. But why “must” your all-powerful, all-knowing God deliberately design 99% that are irrelevant to his purpose? As first-cause creator, why on earth would he create such a binding obligation to use what you yourself call a messy, inefficient system to achieve what you tell us is his one and only purpose? You have no idea. Only God can make sense of such nonsense. And please stop repeating that my various alternative explanations are “purposeless”. Experiments to find a particular formula, or the joy of making new discoveries are purposes.

DAVID: God does not tell me why He chose to evolve us, when He could create a universe and life itself.

dhw: The issue is not why, if he exists, he chose to evolve us! READ THE FIRST BOLD!

Pure nonsense!! I cannot know why God chose to evolve us. Evolution requires everything you complain about. Your form of God also evolved us by 'experimenting and discovering', describing a new form of a clueless God, which no religion would recognize.

DAVID: Your God has no fixed goals, and you view in the bold is an example of an excuse for lacking purpose.

dhw: I have offered two “fixed goals”. READ THE SECOND BOLD!

Sure, invented goals of a humanized God.

DAVID: And your directionless God used the same evolutionary process as mine.

dhw: A God with a goal (READ THE SECOND BOLD) is not directionless, and he did not necessarily use the same evolutionary process as yours, because yours individually designed every species, even though 99% were irrelevant to his purpose, whereas mine either designed them or gave them the freedom to design themselves BECAUSE they were relevant to his purpose.

Stop and think: tell us His different evolutionary process, please!

DAVID: Same distorted view of how evolution works when it is directed toward a goal. Raup's review of evolution showed it required a 99.9% loss as a natural result of the process.

dhw: The 99.9% loss is a fact. But if Raup tells you that your God had to design 100 species and then kill off 99.9 of them because they were irrelevant to his one and only goal (us and our food), his theory is just as senseless as yours. But I don’t know Raup’s theory, so I am only criticizing yours.

You know Raup's pure point of 99.9% species loss due to bad luck in attempting survival. Don't try to add my theory to his aproach.

DAVID: Endless sophistry. God chose to evolve us for His special unknown reasons. We have both made endless guesses as to why.

dhw: If God exists, and since we both accept evolution as a fact, then of course he chose to evolve us and every other species that exists and/or existed. That is not the problem and you know it, and you are the one who is guilty of sophistry because you keep leaving it out of your vague generalizations. You cannot find any reasons for the theory I have bolded above, and so you keep dodging it.

DAVID: A disagreement is not dodging. I don't generalize, as I have very specific reasons for my positions.

dhw: “He chose to evolve us for His special unknown reasons” could hardly be more vague, and you cannot find a single specific reason for your fixed belief in the bolded theory.

Any view of God is vague. Evolution exists/existed, God created our reality, so evolution is His choice of creating forms of life. Pure logic.

dhw: I wonder what your fellow theologians would make of your theories.

DAVID: Their articles mirror my theology.

dhw: So they ridicule his method of designing his one and only purpose as “messy, cumbersome and inefficient”, and they inform us that their all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God knew perfectly well that he was creating future war, murder, rape, flood, famine, disease etc. etc. but went ahead all the same. I’m surprised that they all embrace such negative views of their God. [...]

DAVID: You can't see the truth of reality with your dark view of reality. I have not seen a discussion of theodicy in ID.

dhw: The problem of why an all-good God would create evil is not solved by telling me to ignore evil. If your ID-ers don’t discuss theodicy (and I doubt if they all ridicule your God’s method of achieving his purpose as messy, cumbersome and inefficient), please stop telling me that their articles mirror your theology.

You know so little of ID, you can't criticize me. Their main point is an eternal mind designed all of evolution and its biochemistry.