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

by dhw, Wednesday, October 18, 2023, 11:52 (192 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: It makes perfect sense to me to accept God's choice of action. I don't need to know His reasons, why do you?

dhw: For the nth time, you “accept” your own senseless theory of what is your God’s action. It is not a fact that his purpose was us, or that he individually designed every species.

DAVID: Of course it is not fact. It is faith and belief.

So you don’t “accept” God’s choice of action, because you don’t know that he designed every species, and you don’t know that he did so with the sole purpose of designing us plus food, although 99.9% of his designs had no connection with us plus food. You simply have faith and belief in a theory which makes no sense to you. Thank you for this confirmation.

Theodicy

DAVID: The good God produced far outweighed the secondary appearance of evil.

dhw: That does not mean evil doesn’t exist, and it is the existence of evil that is the problem. Once more, if your all-powerful God created the evil in the system as a challenge to us (one of your theories), then clearly he did so deliberately. […]

DAVID: I did not say God wanted evil! He didn't want a Gaden of Eden existence with no challenges. As a result, we have free will and the challenges resulted in our current advanced civilization.

Of course you didn’t say it, because you can’t face the implications of your theory! Take it step by step. Your God is all-powerful. Therefore he would not create a system he did not want. He is all-knowing. Therefore he would know that his system would produce evil, which according to you is his challenge to us (Eden would be boring). Therefore he wanted a system which would produce evil. Question: how does that make him all-good?

DAVID: Understanding the logical point of proportionality answers the criticisms in theodicy.

dhw: Of course it doesn’t! Evil exists, regardless of percentages, so stop pretending that war, rape, murder – all of which are products of the system your God invented – aren’t a problem for those who believe him to be all-good.

DAVID: Our responses show how we can conceive Him as all-good.

Your responses so far have been 1) he is all-good because you only want to think of the good he does and to ignore the evil. 2) Although he is all-powerful, and would therefore only produce a system he wanted to produce, and although he is all-knowing and therefore knew that his system would produce evil, and although as first-cause he is the creator of everything, he had no choice other than knowingly to create a system that would produce evil, over which he has no control. This apparently means he is all-powerful and all-good. 3) Being all-powerful, he deliberately created a system that would produce evil in order to challenge humans, but wanting to produce evil apparently makes him all-good.

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. […] This means there is 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?

DAVID: Evolution with a purpose is not the theatrical sideshow you describe rudderlessly wandering along. For whose interest is it created?? If you are inferring God, He doesn't need to entertain Himself.

dhw: But you believe he enjoys creating, is interested in his creations, and a Garden of Eden would be boring. And under theodicy, you insist that he gave humans the means of “rudderlessly wandering along”, out of his control. Why, if not out of interest in what we might come up with (or how we would meet the challenge)? And why should he not have given the same freedom to speciate for the same reason? If he is interested in his creations, why would he not invent a system which he would find interesting?

DAVID: Again, your humanized form of God has returned. God does not need to entertain Himself or create entertainment. He creates with purpose to create His goal/goals.

I have rejected the word “entertainment” and stuck rigidly to the two terms you have used: he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations. You accept that we would share some of his thought patterns and emotions. I agree that he would create with purpose. The only goal you allow him is us plus food, which makes a mockery of your theory that he deliberately designed 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with us plus food. Why are you so opposed to the idea that a God who enjoys and is interested in his creations might have created them because he wants to create something he will enjoy and be interested in?