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

by dhw, Thursday, October 19, 2023, 10:55 (191 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.
And:
DAVID: Of course it is not fact. It is faith and belief.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: As a believer, my theory makes perfect sense to me or I wouldn't believe in it! Thank you for revealing your muddled way of thinking in this analysis of me.

You can’t think of any reason why your God would design 99.9 unnecessary species out of 100 etc., but you “don’t need to know his reasons” because this is what you believe. How does your inability to find a reason and your not needing to find a reason come to mean that your theory makes perfect sense to you?

Theodicy

dhw:...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: To use all the enormous good from God both God and humans must accept the small, by comparison, evil byproducts.

We’re not discussing what humans must accept, but how your first-cause God’s production of evil can square with the theory that he is all-good.

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Your brain is muddied by your overemphasis on the amount of evil.

There is no overemphasis. Regardless of proportion, evil exists, and the question is how your first-cause God’s production of evil can square with the theory that he is 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: 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.

dhw: 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?

DAVID: I'm sure God is interested in His own way. But He doesn't create for self-entertainment.

You were sure that he enjoyed creating. Please stick to “enjoyment”.

DAVID: He is not such a human-like God…..

Please stop talking as if you knew your God personally.

DAVID …but your limited imagination seems to allow only allow for that species of God.

Unlike you, I do not pretend to know your God. I offer alternative theistic theories (experimentation to create one form, experimentation or free-for-all to discover the potential of his invention) to explain life’s history, and although you acknowledge that all of them logically explain the 99.9% which you can’t explain, you reject them because they don’t conform to your preconceived ideas about your God’s nature.