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

by dhw, Monday, October 16, 2023, 12:21 (194 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: […] The process of evolution is not your distorted version. Early simple forms are gradually turned into more complex forms step by step.

dhw: Correct. But that does not mean that every simple and every complex form was specially designed by your God for the sole purpose of designing sapiens plus food.

DAVID: That is my belief.

I know it is, but the fact that evolution produced increasingly complex forms, 99.9% of which had no connection with us plus food, does not provide any support for your belief, so why mention it?

DAVID: What disappears are all the early discarded forms. The small early group becomes an enormous present group.

dhw: Correct. What disappears is what disappears. According to your statistics, 99.9% were discarded, and 0.1% became the present group.[…]

DAVID: It is a problem for you, not me. If evolution occurred, and with God in charge, it is logical to assume God chose this system of creation. Perfectly sensible.

Of course if he exists, it is logical that he chose evolution for whatever may have been his purpose. That does not mean he chose to design every species individually, or that his one and only purpose was to design us and our food! Stop dodging!

DAVID: My explanation of the 99.9% clearly defines your distortion of the statistics. Your problem is your human brain, not thinking at God's level, complains of God's method and thinks He should have done it differently. You questioned years ago, why not direct creation, since God had demonstrated the ability within evolution.

It is not a complaint about God’s method but about your ridiculous theories concerning his method and purpose! What distortion? You can’t find ANY explanation why he would have chosen to design and then have to cull 99.9% out of 100 species that had no connection with the purpose you impose on him. You agree that it doesn’t make sense to you, but you can’t bring yourself to admit that one or other of your theories might be wrong.

Theodicy

dhw: If your God is first cause, he was not presented with facts beyond his control. He invented them all. I can accept, however, that if he is all- powerful, this was the system he wanted to create. But that means he wanted to create a system which he knew would produce evil. How does that make him all-good?

DAVID: Same answer: His good works came with side effects beyond His controls. As for the system of life, God knew all the 'available' choices He thought of and picked the best.

Beyond his control = he is not all-powerful. If he is all-powerful, he would have picked the one he wanted, which is the one that produced evil. If he wanted to produce evil (as in your theory that he did so in order to challenge humans), how does that make him all-good?

DAVID: The evil did not come directly from God in all instances.

No, but according to your challenge theory, he would have deliberately created a system which he knew would produce evil. How does that make him all-good?

DAVID: […] all the good He created had evil as byproducts not under His control.

dhw: […] An all-powerful God would only create a system out of his control if he wanted to, and an all-knowing God would have known all about evil before he produced the system which in turn produced it. How could he know all about evil and deliberately produce a system which he knew would produce evil if he is all-good?

DAVID: Theism recognizes the theodicy problem. God knew evil would appear, secondhand. The good far outweighed the evil.

Fine. He created a system knowing that it would produce evil. How does that make him all-good? Proportionality does not make evil unreal, regardless of percentages.

dhw: An added bonus here concerns your dotty theory of evolution. If your God, for whatever reason, was quite happy to lose control of the system that produced evil, then he might have been happy to lose control of evolution itself (giving life forms the intelligence with which to create their own designs) – a theory which would automatically solve the problem you have created for yourself by making him design 99.9% of species irrelevant to his purpose.

DAVID: So, if the organisms produce their own next species that makeup the 99.9% loss, how does that solve the problem of the loss? They are following God-given plans of design!!

Because if speciation and survival depend on the varying forms and degrees of intelligence (as possibly designed by your God) of the cell communities, some will not be able to cope with changing conditions. Over the course of thousands of millions of years, with constant changes in conditions, species will come and go. That is what happened to 99.9% - many of which actually lived for millions of years until new conditions arose under which they could not survive. No God-given plan of design other than to create a system that would produce an endlessly changing and even unpredictable variety of species which would come and go. Far more interesting than a puppet show, don't you think?