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

by dhw, Friday, October 06, 2023, 11:45 (204 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Adler and I believe God's primary purpose was to create humans by evolving them.

dhw: You have specified that the creation of humans plus food was your God’s one and only purpose. If “primary”, what were his other purposes?

DAVID: Everything else is secondary and directed to preparing for humans.

And this belief of yours leads to the following absurd theory:
dhw: The method you have specified up to now is that your God specially designed 99 out of 100 species that had no connection with his one and only purpose, which was to design us and our food, and you have no idea why he would use what you call such a messy, cumbersome and inefficient system.

DAVID: God had His own reasons. Unfortunately for you I am not His psychoanalyst.

So once more you admit that your theory (it’s not a fact) makes no sense to you. Since you can’t make any sense of it, why do you refuse to admit that it might be wrong?

DAVID: The […] bold is your strawman invention of a twisted interpretation of God's form of evolution, which is the only form we have.

dhw: It is YOUR twisted interpretation of your God’s form of evolution, not mine! Please tell us which part of it you now wish to reject.

DAVID: Your idiotic exclusion of 99% of evolution as unnecessary.

It is YOUR idiotic exclusion, because it is you who say they had no connection with (= were not necessary for) his one and only purpose, and only he knows why he designed them and then had to get rid of them! You simply refuse to believe that your God may have had a different purpose, which might explain why he designed them or why he created a free-for-all in which he gave them the means to design themselves.

Theodicy

dhw: Your “byproduct” theory is irrelevant. Do you believe that your evil-hating God is all-powerful and all-good, and would only create what he wants to create? If he’s all-powerful, why do you think he is incapable of designing a system which does not produce something he hates? If he only creates what he wants to create, why do you think he wanted to create a system which he knew would produce evil?

DAVID: Incapable? God created what He could create from available substrates. And byproduct results are relevant.

dhw: If he is the first, all-powerful cause of everything, it’s not a question of “available substrates” but of what substrates he wanted to create! If he was capable of designing the “substrates” necessary for a Garden of Eden, why did he choose not to do so? If he is all-knowing, he knew that his system would produce evil, whether you call it a byproduct or not. Now please answer the bolded questions above.

DAVID: God produced what He thought was best to produce.

I would suggest that if he is all-powerful, he would have produced what he wanted to produce.

DAVID: Eden was a simple place compared to this reality.

Agreed. So maybe he wanted the complexities of good and evil, which would make life more interesting for us to lead and for him to watch. But then you have this wretched problem of theodicy: how can a God who wants a mixture of good and evil be all-good?

DAVID: Why do you endorse a biblical place in this discussion of this reality and God's role in it?

Sorry, I thought you’d realized that Eden is just an image for a place without evil.

DAVID: Must I repeat the evils are byproducts of His good works.

I’d rather you didn’t, since it does not offer a single contribution to the discussion on how/why an all-good and all powerful God, who would only create what he wanted to create, can design a system which he knows will result in evil – whether it’s a byproduct or not.

dhw: Your worship of Adler does not answer any of my questions relating to your illogical theories of evolution and your contradictory views of his nature, as exemplified by your attempts to dodge the problem of theodicy.

DAVID: I have not dodged theodicy. I am the one who first raised the issue, please remember.

Your repeated solution to the problem of theodicy is to pretend that the proportion of evil to good is so small that there isn’t a problem. I call that dodging.