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

by dhw, Friday, October 13, 2023, 11:11 (197 days ago) @ David Turell

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!

DAVID: The 99.9% losses created today's bush of life.

No they didn’t. The 0.1% led to today’s bush of life.

DAVID: They had to die to make way for today's survivors.

What was the point of your God designing them in the first place if they had no connection with his one and only purpose? Why do you yourself call this method messy, cumbersome and inefficient?

DAVID: 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.

We only know of one evolution of life. You make it sound as if your all-powerful God was subject to some kind of law beyond his control: “If thou wishest to design humans plus food, thou must first design 99.9 out of 100 species that have no connection with humans plus food.” Yes, you have a problem, and it’s not helped by your refusal to believe that your senseless theory might be wrong
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DAVID: Do you understand math at all?? The 0.1% is the result of evolution providing a huge current bush of life.

So why did your all-powerful God have to design and then cull the unnecessary 99.9%?

DAVID: 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.

You don’t need to tell me the history of evolution. Just answer the question.

DAVID: Understanding the full meaning of 'culling' is the key: [dhw: I’ll only repeat your bolds:)

To remove rejected members or parts from (a herd, for example).
n. Something picked out from others, especially something rejected because of inferior quality' (DAVID’s bold)

I know what cull means! Please tell me why he designed them in the first place if he knew they would have to be culled or “removed” or wiped off the face of the Earth.

Theodicy

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

Response coming up. But first:

dhw: 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?

DAVID: 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.

Your generalizations do not provide an answer to my specific questions. Please don’t dodge. As regards today’s entry:

QUOTE: Anyone who is ready to deny God’s existence because we occasionally get sick should first explain the origin of the fantastic complexity and layers of integrated design that our physical bodies manifest in order to be alive at all.

Same silly blunder made by Jill and Shepherd. Theodicy does not deal with the question of God’s existence, but with that of his nature on the assumption that he does exist..

QUOTE:: if human evil aligns with naturalism, then what is the source of our sense of morality, justice, and evil versus good?

What is the source of our sense of evil, self-interest, sadism? If God is the first cause of everything, he is the source of everything! It’s not a matter of aligning with naturalism but of aligning with the view of God as being all-good! How can God be the source of evil and yet be all-good?

QUOTE: in the biblical view, giving humans the choice to choose good in the midst of suffering results in a far greater good where even the memory of suffering is wiped away.

Try telling that to the millions of people who suffer/have suffered from the effects of war, rape, murder, famine, flood, disease...How does a possible loss of memory prove that the source of good and evil is all-good?

DAVID: note the appeal to proportionality. Note the reference to our bodies as machines that break down. Note the acceptance that this reality is the only one that can work. dhw fails to answer how his Edenistic reality could work. Where dhw rails at me, he must realize I simply mirror current theistic thinking.

I don’t rail at you, and I don’t even dispute most of the points you make. But I calmly point out to you that all the above arguments are irrelevant to the problem of theodicy, which is not a question of proving God’s existence, or of how much evil there is in the world, or of what alternatives I can offer. The question concerns the nature of God: if, as first cause – i.e. the source of all the realities we know – he knowingly invented a system which produced evil, how can he be all-good?