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

by dhw, Monday, October 02, 2023, 10:27 (208 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Faith is not knowing, it is believing. We are not dealing with fact. dhw's problem is he wants 'factual evidence' he cannot have and will never have.

dhw: So long as you believe your nonsensical theory, it apparently becomes a fact, although there is no factual evidence (a) that your God exists, (b) that his one and only purpose was to design us and our food, (c) that he designed every species that ever lived, and (d) that he did so knowing that 99.9% of them were irrelevant to the purpose you impose on him. You are tying yourself in more knots than a weaverbird could ever tie in its nest.

DAVID: Right. No facts. All beliefs based on the original step to have faith in God's existence. That step was based on proof beyond a reasonable doubt of the evidence for design. Thus a designer called God. You are right on the cusp, as an agnostic who recognizes design.

As usual, you dodge the issue here, which is not the existence of God but the nature, purposes and methods of God if he exists. You insist that your God’s only purpose was us plus food, and so he deliberately designed 99.9% of species that had no connection with his one and only purpose – a method you yourself ridicule as messy, cumbersome and inefficient, and yet you cling to the theory as if it were a God-given fact.

DAVID: I, like all believers, view God as all-powerful and selfless.

dhw: […] If you believe that he takes pleasure in creating, how can he possibly do so without a self which is conscious of the enjoyment? If he is all-powerful, how can he possibly be incapable of preventing the evil that apparently he hates?

DAVID: God does not have a physical self. He is immaterial, purely a mental state, that is pure thought.

dhw: Nobody has said he is physical! What is “pure thought” if it has no content? If he exists, the question is whether some of his thought patterns and emotions (as listed earlier) are like ours.

DAVID: The real question is are our thoughts are in any way comparable to His?

You have said you believe he enjoys creating, and is selfless and all-powerful, so please answer the two questions bolded above.

dhw: […] you have now realized that terms like enjoyment and interest and all-goodness and selflessness are not “allegorical”, but mean exactly what they say.

DAVID: NO. We know what those words mean at the human level, nothing more about how they apply to God.

Why “no”? We know what the terms mean (they are not “allegorical”), and yes, the question is whether they apply to God. You have said that you think they do, and so I have asked you two questions. Please answer them.

DAVID: To answer the last question, it appears God lets us manage the evil we create.

dhw: If he exists, then obviously he is not intervening. That does not help us to understand why, if he is all-good, all-powerful and therefore only creates what he wants to create, and hates evil – as you believe he does – he created a system which he knew would result in evil, and does nothing to prevent it.

DAVID: We must assume God does not wish to intervene now.

Obviously (if he exists). But that that does not help us to understand what I have now bolded above. Stop dodging.

DAVID: I don't dodge. Theodicy is a matter of perceived proportionality. You intensely magnify all teh bad in the world, when it is mostely very good.

Theodicy has nothing whatsoever to do with your made-up percentages of proportionality. Do you deny that there is such a thing as evil? If you accept that evil exists, then regardless of percentages, why and how could an all-good God produce it?

Wikipedia describes theodicy as: an argument that attempts to resolve the problem of evil that arises when omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and omniscience are all simultaneously ascribed to God.[1]
Your attempt to resolve the problem is to pretend that evil is so minor that there is no problem to resolve.