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

by David Turell , Tuesday, October 24, 2023, 18:58 (185 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: A really powerful all-knowing purposeful God has no need for experimentation as He knows full well how to achieve His purposes.

dhw: If your all-powerful, all-knowing, purposeful God would “directly create whatever he wishes directly”, and his only purpose was to design us and our food, why would he directly design and then have to cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with his one and only purpose? Do you call that ”direct” creation? Welcome to Wonderland.

The all-powerful God examines all choices of method and chooses the best one to achieve His goals.

DAVID: Yes, you are in Alice in Wonderland. A teleological thought process explains God's role and destroys your Darwinism approach which cannot allow a purposeful evolutionary approach as anathema to chance.

dhw: Our discussion is based on your premise that God exists and is responsible for evolution. A God who experiments or deliberately creates a free-for-all has nothing whatsoever to do with Darwin’s theory, so please stop using Darwin as an excuse for dodging your self-contradictions. You keep agreeing that you have no idea why your God would use your messy, cumbersome, inefficient and now “weak” method to achieve the purpose you impose on him. And yet you continue to argue that this version is really powerful, whereas a God who does precisely what he wants to do (experiment, discover, enjoy new creations) is weak. I guess part of being in Wonderland is not believing you’re in Wonderland!

Comparing my view above with this description, it is a direct antithesis of my view. God has no need to experiment, discover, or create for enjoyment. Yours is entirely humanized. It is amazing you can't see that.

Theodicy

DAVID: Do you remember what you read? I raised the theodicy issue years ago specifically to discuss the problem.

dhw: How does that justify your pretence that the problem is solved by pretending there is no problem?

Of course, there is a problem!!! We live with evil.

DAVID: God has accepted the byproducts of His good works as necessaary.

dhw: So your all-powerful God has accepted that he must give up direct control (= weak). And since according to you he hates evil, presumably (since he has given us free will) part of his goal is to eliminate the evil he hates – i.e. he HOPES the process will achieve his wished-for goal. Congratulations, your God has now achieved namby-pamby status, as bolded above.

God has created a powerful form of life, the one we have. I've fully explained how free-to- act bacteria must exist, and unfortunately cause trouble. Free-to-act humans are the same.

dhw: If "my God" wants to experiment or wants to create a free-for-all, and proceeds to experiment or to create a free-for-all, how does that come to mean he is not all-powerful?

DAVID: God created a universe from Himself. Developed the perfect planet for life and then invented life. Then suddenly, in your version, He has to experiment or gives over control to a free-for-all so He can be entertained by unexpected results. Dual/split personalities is the weird result.

dhw: No split at all. He doesn’t “have to” experiment in any of my versions. He creates life because he wants to enjoy creating new things through experimenting or through the same free-for-all that you envisage with your out-of-control bugs and your human free will. The only split personality that has emerged from our discussions is your all-powerful God who directly creates what he wants to create, except that he doesn’t, and your first-cause, all-good God who creates evil out of himself.

DAVID: The good bugs must be free of action while under instructions for life to work. God found this the only way possible. We produce evil, not God.

dhw: See above. Please understand that I’m not accusing God of waging war or committing murder or rape. I’m merely pointing out that your first-cause designer who created all life out of himself, and who deliberately designed a life form which he knew would wage war, or commit murder or rape – none of which ever existed before he designed the life form – can hardly be all-good.

The usual distorted view of an all-good God. The answer: Evil is our fault not God's