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

by David Turell , Thursday, October 12, 2023, 20:42 (406 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: If all current branches help to fill out our food supply, why do you see no connection?

dhw: Because as you keep telling us, only 0.1% of history’s branches have helped to “fill out our food supply”, and the other 99.9% had to be killed off (by him or by chance – never made clear), because they had no connection with us and our food!

The 99.9% losses created today's bush of life. They had to die to make way for today's survivors. That is simply how evolution works. Your problem is wondering why God chose such a cumbersome way to achieve His goals. It is my problem also, because I don't know God's reasoning either. But I don't need to know as you do. Leading to your wackiest analysis yet:

dhw: This is the wackiest theory you’ve come up with to date. You have your God designing all species, 99.9% of which had no connection with us plus our food, but their death apparently resulted in us and our food! No it didn’t. According to your theory, only the surviving 0.1% “resulted in us” and our food. So why did he design the unnecessary 99.9%, which then had to die out (although he apparently left it to chance to do the culling)? You admit you can’t think of any reason. But you won’t admit that your irrational theories might be wrong.

Do you understand math at all?? The 0.1% is the result of evolution providing a huge current bush of life. It started with Archaea, simple bacterial forms and ended with the most complex forms of today, especially us with our giant brain, an organ like none other on Earth. Understanding the full meaning of 'culling' is the key:

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/culling

"cull
(kŭl)
tr.v. culled, cull·ing, culls
1. To pick out from others; select.
2. To gather; collect.
3. To remove rejected members or parts from (a herd, for example).
n.
Something picked out from others, especially something rejected because of inferior quality' (my bold)

Theodicy

DAVID: An all-good God had to allow evil if He granted us free will. Good bacteria and viruses are necessary for ecosystems. Yes, they get in bad places, because they have to act independently of any controls.

dhw: I don’t have a problem with the idea that God created a free-for-all. I would even apply it to evolution, but that’s another subject. And unlike Jill and Dr Shepherd, I don’t have a problem with evil and God co-existing. The problem is how and why an all-good, all-powerful God (if he exists), could invent a system he knew would produce evil, which you say he hates. I would have thought this was a crucial question for any believer, since it entails the very nature of the God they believe in.

You have offered three answers; 1) Proportionality, which merely suggests we shouldn’t bother with the problem; 2) we can’t have good without bad (but you won’t apply the same condition to God himself, though as first cause he created everything out of himself), and 3) he wanted to set us a challenge, which means he deliberately worked evil into his invention – hardly commensurate with the work of an all-good God.

I accept the God you see. And it is exactly current theistic thought. See today's entry on theodicy analyzed by a theist.

I’ll skip now to the final point:

dhw: If he hates evil (and therefore would not have wanted it but couldn’t avoid its production), how does that make him all-powerful? Perhaps this is why you’re so desperate to forget your earlier certainty that he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations. The enjoyment of creating the system, knowing that the Holocaust was coming, and watching it with interest is hard to reconcile with the concept of an all-good God.

DAVID: Of course, it is right to assume God enjoys creating, because that was His intention. But we are saddled with the problem of not knowing just how the word 'enjoy' actually relates to God. for being 'interested', the same thinking applies.[…]

dhw: You and I both know what the terms mean, just as we know what you mean by all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful, selfless etc. Do you tell us that God is all-good, but you don’t know how the word relates to God? Now consider your theory that he deliberately created evil in order to challenge us. So he enjoys creating the system, with free will etc., and he is interested in the results, and we mustn’t forget that Eden would be boring. The Holocaust is certainly not boring, and being all-knowing, he knew such things would happen. Would you say his enjoyment of creating a system that would produce such evil, and his interest in the evil his system has produced are commensurate with the term all-good? And if he had no choice but to combine good and evil, though he hated evil, would you say this was commensurate with the term all-powerful?

Anyone so powerful to make a universe and invent life is all-powerful by definition. What God created required vast knowledge to create the designs, thus, all-knowing. See today's entry on tbeodicy.