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

by David Turell , Saturday, August 26, 2023, 18:00 (453 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: The fact that you don’t like the idea of your God experimenting or creating a free-for-all does not provide the slightest defence of your own illogical theory, which you admit makes no sense to you.

My defense is whatever God does is OK with me. I don't need His reasons, only you do.

DAVID: Humans are an obvious goal.[…].

dhw: The fact that if God exists he directly or indirectly created every life form that ever existed means that every life form that ever existed must have had a goal, and it is abundantly clear that since 99.9% had no connection with humans plus food his one and only goal could not possibly have been to design humans plus food.[/b]***

DAVID: The food is a giant bush of life created by God's method of evolutionary creation. We are at the current end point.

dhw: If God exists, this is perfectly logical. It does not answer question ***.

Yes it does. Using God's evolutionary method resulted in a necessary loss of 0.1% of all previous forms to the present.

DAVID: It is my contention and Adler's that humans are so unusual only a special creation by God could have produced them.

dhw: It is also your contention that all life is so complex that only a special creation by God could have produced it. This does not answer the question ***.

See above, no need to. Evolution is a drive to complexity.

DAVID: The giant food supply, provided by God, is barely sufficient, as shown by starvation on the world. Your *** is specious reasoning.

No one would deny the problem of starvation. It has nothing to do with the question ***. You have now resorted to a liturgy of non sequiturs, some of which contain obvious truths, as if somehow they would cancel out your own admission that you have no answer to question ***, which means your theory does not make any sense to you. Please stop this silly game. You believe in a bit of non-sense, and refuse to consider any logical alternatives.

Not nonsense but more careful reasoning than yours. Whatever God does is OK with me. I don't need His reasons, only you do.

Theodicy

dhw: How do you know that your all-powerful God was incapable of creating a Garden of Eden?

DAVID: He wasn't incapable. He chose differently. Eden without competition was a dead end.

dhw: Since when was “competition” synonymous with “evil”? Do you think the world would come to an end if we didn’t have war, murder, rape, famine, flood, disease?

DAVID: Wrong interpretation. Competition provided for survival of the fittest according to Darwin and created evolution.

dhw: Lovely to see you finally supporting Darwin, although you’ve forgotten that symbiosis/cooperation also provided for survival and evolution. But we are not arguing about the facts of evolution! The problem is why an all-good God would even have thought of a system which resulted in the evils of war, murder, rape, famine, flood, disease etc., let alone gone ahead with it knowing the suffering these events would cause. You have given us two possible answers, as follows:
dhw: (1) forget about evil, which is only a minor matter, or (2) despite being all-powerful, he had no choice. You also conveniently forget your own belief that your God would have created what he wanted to create. So we have two puzzles now: Why would an all-good God want to create evil, and why would an all-powerful God be powerless to prevent evil?
And all you can come up with is:

DAVID: My answer is in a new article posed here about phages and bacteria and all the necessary good they do to support all life on Earth.

dhw: Yes, that is your answer No. 1. Forget about evil and focus only on good.

DAVID: It is simple. Yes, there is evil but the good overwhelms it.

dhw: Yet again: the problem of theodicy is why/how an all-good God could create evil, and it is not solved by saying there is more good than evil so let’s ignore evil.

Both bacteria and viruses are required for our form of life as necessary participants. That they are doing 99% good and 1% bad is a standard answer in theodicy essays. I can do no better.