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

by dhw, Monday, August 14, 2023, 13:15 (257 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I cannot know why God chose to evolve us.

I can only repeat the comment you are pretending to answer. The issue is not why your God chose to evolve us, but why he chose to individually design 99 out of 100 species that had no connection with us, although you claim that we were his one and only purpose.

DAVID: Evolution requires everything you complain about.

According to you, God is the master of evolution, not its servant. Evolution does not say to God: “Thou must specially design 100 species, 99 of which must be irrelevant to thy purpose.”

DAVID: Your form of God also evolved us by 'experimenting and discovering', describing a new form of a clueless God, which no religion would recognize.

Please tell me which religion preaches that God is a messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer who individually designed 99 out of 100 species that had no connection with his one and only purpose. Why do you describe a God who wants to create “novelties”, i.e. life forms which never existed before, and succeeds in doing so, as “clueless”?

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! [To find a particular formula, or the joy of making new discoveries]

DAVID: Sure, invented goals of a humanized God.

The fact that you don’t accept these logical theistic explanations of evolution and prefer your own, which you yourself find incomprehensible, does not justify your claim that my versions of God have “no fixed goals”. Stop dodging.

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.

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

Stop and read what I write. “He did not necessarily use the same evolutionary process”. In my first two theistic theories, the process is the same as yours, except that in neither case were his designs irrelevant to his purpose, but in my third alternative, he did NOT design all species, and instead gave them the wherewithal to do their own designing.

DAVID: 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.

DAVID: 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 approach.

I have no objection to the comment that extinction is a matter of bad luck. If Raup is irrelevant to your own absurd theory, why have you quoted him?

DAVID: God chose to evolve us for His special unknown reasons. […]

dhw: […] 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.

DAVID: 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.

Yes, yes, yawn, yawn. If God exists, that is pure logic. What is not pure logic is that he chose to design 99 out of 100 forms of life that were irrelevant to what you say was his one and only purpose: to design us and our food. You cannot find any reasons for this absurd theory, and so you keep dodging it.

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

And that is not the point in dispute. You have claimed that they support your absurd theory of evolution and your answer to the problem of theodicy, and now you admit that they don’t, so please stop pretending that ID articles “mirror” your theology.