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

by dhw, Thursday, September 28, 2023, 07:33 (420 days ago) @ David Turell

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

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

DAVID: Surprise, Rabbis present the word of God.

How do you know it’s the word of God? My unanswered question was: How does Feser know that his God doesn’t WANT the evil that has emerged from the natural order?

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: And you don't know either! So we can discuss understanding the problem of meaning.

The only problem of meaning is that you choose to question meanings when you don’t like their implications (e.g. enjoyment and interest), but you don’t query the meanings of terms you like (e.g. selfless and all-good). The fact is, we both know exactly what you mean by all these terms. What we don’t know is whether they are applicable to your God or not.

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: He expects us to be obligated.

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

DAVID: Of course, I can't. But I can assume what God might want of us.

No you can’t. You can only theorize about what God might want of us, but since you insist that he is all-knowing and therefore knows precisely what we are going to do, it would clearly be absurd for him to tell us not to do what he already knows we are going to do. If he knows we’re going to do the evil he has enabled us to do, how can he be all-good? If free will leaves him NOT knowing what we’re going to do, how can he be all-knowing?

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.

dhw: 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: No, I can't be certain!!! But I use the terms for discussing at our level of existence.

Once upon a time, you were certain, just as you are certain that your God is all-good and selfless. If you think your God enjoys creating and is selfless and all-good, why should those terms only apply to our level of existence?

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: […] Over here God is 'perfectly good'.

dhw:. […] 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.

DAVID: I approve of all words. Their usage is at issue as they attempt to describe God.

And that is why I say that if you renounce your previous belief that God enjoyed creating, you should also stop using such terms as all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, and selfless.