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

by David Turell , Saturday, September 30, 2023, 18:01 (418 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Not a God system!! All a human system. Human free will allows us to create our current civilization with its good and bad parts. All human creations, not God's.

dhw: But your God is all-knowing, so he knew that by giving humans free will, he would enable them to produce all the evils which never existed until he created life out of himself. If he is all-powerful, does it not stand to reason that he would only create what he wanted to create? So did he or did not want to create a system which would produce evil?

God obviously wanted humans whom He knew would create evil.

DAVID: If God created, it is what God wanted to create, no reasons given. We humans assume God had reasons. Perhaps God is simply reasonless purpose.

dhw: So your God wanted to create evil, but although you never cease to tell us how purposeful he is, he may have had a purposeless purpose for doing so.

Humans were His purpose. God is never purposeless except in your mind.

DAVID: Your search for 'evidence' pollutes your thinking. The only evidence is our reality. God, as a theoretical personage, is in the eye of the beholder. In that context God hates evil, as I do.

dhw: A theoretical personage whose nature is “in the eye of the beholder” leaves it open to all of us to load him with whatever characteristics we like, and so neither you nor Adler nor the rabbis nor the theologians have any authority to tell us how to think about him. But we can also test the reasonableness of different views. For instance, as above: if he’s all-powerful, he must have created what he wanted to create, so why did he want to create a world of good and evil if he hates evil? Or if he is the first cause of all things, and created a system which would result in evil as well as good, how can he be all-good?

It is all the way you look at balance. I see life for us as 99% good. God's 'system' is human beings who create their own evil, which God expects them to control.

DAVID: Evil is a human concept.

dhw: Then so is good. How come your all-knowing God knew nothing about good and evil before he designed the humans who produced both?

Our concepts are well known to God.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Rabbis believe in God as I do, and we have the same God theologically and theoretically. God has no self as we view our selves.

dhw: Your rabbis’ source – what you call the “Word of God” - is the Pentateuch. I quote: Exodus 20: “I am the Lord thy God […] Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God” – in a modern translation this has changed to: “I am a God exacting exclusive devotion”. Deuteronomy 12: “Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods…” Any prophet who turns to any other god “shall be put to death” (Chapter 13), and anyone else you know who turns to other gods should be killed: “stone him with stones”. Selfless?

I am quoting current thought as in Feser. I'm sure the rabbis are just as current.

DAVID: God is immaterial, not a being. As pure mind He thinks logically, like us. But emotions are our attributes and may not be part of God's attributes.

dhw: Yet again: How can he be all-good and think logically and know everything, and enjoy creating, and be interested in what he creates, and yet have no self? How can he hate evil and yet have no self? Once upon a time you even thought he might want us to admire his work. You and your rabbis and Feser can endow him with whatever attributes you like, but don’t pretend your imaginings have any authenticity.

Current theological thought about God is what we have. Luckily, not your rambling conjectures.