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

by dhw, Monday, October 02, 2023, 10:36 (208 days ago) @ David Turell

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

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

DAVID: God did not want the evil humans create. But He wished to create us while accepting that result. Humans also had the ability fight and control evil.

So now you have your omnipotent, all-knowing, all-good God deliberately creating (and wanting to create) what he knew would produce something he did not want, as you agree in your next comment, which I have bolded:

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.

If he exists, I have no doubt that he had a purpose for creating life.

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

DAVID: To have a thoughtful organism who might study God's purposes.

So a God who has no self wanted to create an organism to study the thinking of his non-self when he created life, including the 99.9 out of 100 species that had nothing to do with his non-self’s purposes. Why do you think he wanted to create an organism that would study his non-self’s purposes?

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.

DAVID: There are agreed upon characteristics among the accepted experts in the theological theories.

“Accepted” by whom? They may be experts in studying the vast number of theological theories that humans have come up with, but none of them is an expert on how to think about God, because nobody even knows if God exists, let alone what his nature and purposes might be.

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: 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.

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

DAVID: Of course, God knew all in advance of our thinking. Our discussions come from a 50,000-year- old language development in a 315,000-old God-given brain.

The fact that we use our brains does not answer the question why and how an all-good God deliberately created a system which he knew would produce evil. Stop dodging.