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

by dhw, Friday, September 29, 2023, 08:44 (419 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Rabbis present the word of God.

dhw: 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?

DAVID: God is presumed ethical. God obviously hates evil as we do.

As first cause, he created a system which he knew would give rise to evil. So did he, in his all-powerfulness, create something he didn’t want to create? Why do you “presume” he hates it? What evidence do you have for such a presumption? Rabbis telling you so? Have they told you why he deliberately created a system he knew would give rise to war, murder and rape?

dhw: […] 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.

At this point, you agreed that it was not a question of meaning but of whether the terms you used were applicable to your God (See the previous thread).

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.

dhw: 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: I equate 'assume' with theorize.

A bad equation. A theory is an unproven explanation. An assumption is the belief that an unproven theory is true.

DAVID: Our evil is not God's fault as you imply. His all-good action gave us free will which results in a much more fulfilling life for us.

I am not questioning the value of free will (if we have it). The question, for the umpteenth time, is how an all-good God can conceive of and create the opportunity for evil.

DAVID: Believers discuss sin, recognizing it is not something God would want. 'All-knowing' means God knows we sin. You can't see that as a non-believer.

Believers cannot “recognize” something they do not know! Believers have a belief. But even if it’s true, it still doesn’t explain how an all-good God can create evil! All-knowing is not confined to the observation of what is actually happening. You have him knowing in advance that his creations, which came out of nothing but his own self, would produce evil. If there was no good and no evil before he created life, where did the concept of evil come from if not from himself? Hence the question posed by theodicy: how does his creation of evil square with his being “perfectly good”? So please stop dodging the question.

The rest of your post goes over ground we have already covered, but I’d like to return to your rabbis and the so-called word of God. What is their source? In particular, I’m interested in your belief that your God is “selfless”, since my alternative theories concerning experimentation and enjoyment are bound up with the concept of God as a being who, in your own words, has thought patterns and emotions like ours.