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

by dhw, Sunday, October 01, 2023, 12:02 (417 days ago) @ David Turell

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?

DAVID: God obviously wanted humans whom He knew would create evil.

Please tell us why he wanted the evil he knew humans would create.

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.

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

Please tell us what you think was your purposeful God's purpose in creating humans.

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.

No comment from you.

dhw: 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?

DAVID: 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.

How you see life is irrelevant to the question of how and why an all-good God can create a system he knows will produce evil.

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?

DAVID: Our concepts are well known to God.

If he is the all-knowing first cause, then all concepts were known to him before they were known to us.

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?

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

You wrote that God warned me “in religious services before you left your religion” and “Rabbis present the word of God.” Please tell us what you and the rabbis understand as being the “word of God”, since clearly the Torah is now regarded as invalid.

dhw: 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.

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

There are no conjectures. I have quoted your own list of what you believe to be divine attributes and asked you to explain the discrepancies. Please give me the answers provided by “current theological thought”.