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

by dhw, Wednesday, September 27, 2023, 14:02 (213 days ago) @ David Turell

FESER: when one properly understands what God is and what morality and moral agents are, it simply makes no sense to think of God as less than perfectly good or as morally obligated to prevent the evil that exists.

dhw: Who judges what is the “proper” understanding? If there is a God who created what Feser calls the “natural order”, and the natural order produces evil, how does that mean God must be perfectly good? Of course he’s not “morally obligated” to prevent the evil. He does what he wants to do! How does Feser know that his God doesn’t WANT the evil that has emerged from the natural order?

DAVID: Remember the word 'sin'? We are warned about sinning by God!!!

dhw: God has never warned me about anything. When did you last talk to him? However, according to your theory, even if he warned us, it can only have been lip-service since apparently he knew in advance exactly what sins we humans would commit!

DAVID: God warned you in religious services before you left your religion.

Surprise, surprise. I thought the religious services were conducted by human beings. My bolded question remains unanswered.

FESER: But the “logical problem of evil” implicitly presupposes that God is himself part of the natural order.

dhw: No it doesn’t. Like the author and painter Feser introduces later, he can create his work without being part of it! An implicit presupposition might be that an all-knowing God knew his work would result in evil, in which case Feser’s approach fits in perfectly with a God who set up the system, and then allowed it to develop in one great free-for-all.

DAVID: He didn't control any organism from free will, freedom of action.

dhw: Yes, a free-for-all, which means that God is NOT part of the natural order. But if he created the natural order, and opted to allow all the evil he knew the free-for-all would produce, how does that come to mean that he is “perfectly good”?

DAVID: A presumption of theists and believers.

Meaningless, since you don’t know whether your terminology (e.g. enjoy, interest, selfless, all-good) means the same to your God as it does to you.

FESER: Sometimes what is good for one kind of physical substance, given its nature, will be bad for another kind, given its different nature.

dhw: Spot on. By killing us, certain bacteria are bad for us, but good for themselves. When Jack murders or rapes Jill, he may do so because he thinks it’s a good thing for him to do. And of course an all-knowing God is not obliged to intervene if he set the whole system up as a free-for-all.

DAVID: Agreed. Everyone consumes necessary daily energy.

dhw: The need for daily energy has nothing to do with war, murder and rape. My point is that if God wanted evil, of course he would not be “morally obligated to prevent the evil that exists”.

DAVID: He expects us to be obligated.

There you go again, pretending you can read your God’s mind.

DAVID: When they [specific words] apply to God they have a special meaning only partially known to us. (Pure Adler)

dhw: We invented the words. There is no “special” meaning. We simply don’t know if the words apply to him.

DAVID: Exactly.

So you agree that “enjoy” means to take pleasure, but you can’t be certain that he takes pleasure in creating, although you are certain that he takes pleasure in creating.

DAVID: The words imply a sense about God at our level of understanding, but realizing we do not know how the words exactly apply to God. An easy concept to understand.

dhw: What is easy to understand is that we don’t know if God is all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing, enjoys, is interested etc. If you and Feser don’t know if God is “perfectly good” in our sense of the words, then don’t tell us he is “perfectly good”.

DAVID: Across Pascal's chasm/wager is all it applies. Over here God is 'perfectly good'.

This has nothing to do with Pascal’s wager. You keep loading your God with attributes, but the moment I point out alternative views, you bury your head in the sand (re theodicy) and you resort to questioning the meaning of words other than those which you approve of.