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

by dhw, Saturday, October 07, 2023, 12:10 (203 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: 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: Your absurd view of my thought processes comes from the fact that I cannot read God's mind. We both know what God did in using an evolutionary process to create humans, and we agree, based on the Cambrin Explosion, God is capable of direct creation. I make perfect sense to propose God chose to evolve us for HIS OWN REASONS.

But you pretend that you CAN read God’s mind! You pretend you know that his sole purpose for creating life was to design us and our food. But since you believe he is capable of direct design, and since you also believe he individually designed 99 out of 100 species that had no connection with his purpose, you admit that you cannot make sense of this combination of theories. Of course your God, if he exists, would have had his own reasons for creating life’s history. But life’s history does not include your made-up version of his single purpose or the messy, cumbersome, inefficient method you impose on him. The only “perfect sense” you offer us with your combination of theories is that it is so illogical that it makes no more sense to you than it does to me.

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.

dhw: 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! […]

DAVID: An evolutionary process (as evidenced by ours) requires a 99.9% loss rate. Therefore, it is necessary.

The only evolution of life that we know of has resulted in the extinction of 99.9% of species. This loss can only have been “necessary” if there was some particular goal which could not be achieved without their loss, in which case it makes no sense for your God to have designed the "unnecessary" 99.9% in the first place! Hence the fact that you can’t find a single reason why your God would act in such a messy, cumbersome and inefficient manner. But you refuse to believe that your personal, totally irrational interpretation of the history might be wrong.

Theodicy

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

DAVID: Agreed. He produced good in giving us free will which allows us to produce evil. Both bacteria and viruses are necessary but can produce disease if in the wrong places. Biproducts of His good works.

What you have agreed is that if he is all powerful, he would have wanted to create the system which he knew would produce both good and evil. How does that make him all-good?

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

dhw: 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, would design a system which he knew would result in evil – whether it’s a byproduct or not.

DAVID: Please tell us what your God would produce in a system with no evil.

A garden of Eden, or what many religious folk imagine to be paradise or heaven, in which all life forms, including humans, live at peace with one another, and even in communion with their God...This is irrelevant to the problem of theodicy, so now please tell us how your God can conceive of evil and knowingly build it into the system which, as first cause, he created out of himself, and yet be all-good.

DAVID: I have not dodged theodicy. […]

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I produced it as a problem!!! You won't accept my answers, because you have an imagined view of an enormous problem.

It’s you who keep using words like “enormous” and “proportionality”, and I keep telling you that they are irrelevant. Evil exists, no matter what percentages you like to manufacture. So please answer the bold.

DAVID: Believers in God accept the problem as part of their belief. Their approach is to accept that God's good works allow evil to appear as byproducts. I await your description of a non-evil-causing system.

Acceptance that there is a problem is not a solution, which is why the debate has continued for centuries. My description is irrelevant to the problem, as it does not explain how your first-cause God can conceive of evil, and deliberately build a system which he knows will cause evil, and yet be “all good”.