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

by dhw, Tuesday, October 03, 2023, 12:54 (415 days ago) @ David Turell

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

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

dhw: 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: I can guess He would be interested in our thought patterns as we guess about Him. Remember God is immaterial mind, nothing more.

How could he possibly be interested in our thought patterns without having any thoughts of his own, i.e. without having a self which thinks?

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

dhw: “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.

DAVID: Adler tells pagans how to believe. He is a world-renowned philosopher of religion.

Lots and lots of religious people, including the writers whose works appear in the Bible and all the “authorities” who preside over all the different religions in the world, tell other people how and what to believe. And strange to relate, there are even world-renowned philosophers who tell people not to believe in a God.

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: If you accept the good, the bad comes with it.

I know it does. That is what underlies the problem of theodicy, which is why and how an all-powerful, all-knowing, ALL-GOOD God who only creates what he wants to create, and who hates evil, proceeded to create a system which he knew would produce evil. How many more times do you intend to dodge this question?