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

by dhw, Friday, October 27, 2023, 12:25 (391 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: […] God is not human. As a personage like no other person, we can only infer God's possible emotions. Love, hate, enjoyment and interest in His creations are all possible characteristics but we do not know if God feels He needs any of these.

dhw: Of course an eternal, immaterial being that can create a universe is not a human being, and of course we can only infer his emotions (if he exists). We are not talking of “needs” but of the possibility that he has these emotions. You agree that the above characteristics are possible, and therefore your original certainty that he enjoys and is interested in his creations makes it perfectly feasible that he could have created life because he wanted to create something to enjoy and be interested in.

DAVID: Our problem is that we do not know what drives God to do anything.

Correct. That is why we can only theorize.

DAVID: In my view God creates with set purposes in mind...

If your God exists, I have no doubt that he would have created life with a purpose/purposes in mind. You have limited his purpose to creating us and our food, and I need hardly remind you of the illogical mess this has landed you in.

DAVID: ...and any form of enjoyments or interests are secondary events, not primary purposes.

What is that supposed to mean? Enjoyment and interest are not “events”, and if you do something because you enjoy doing it and you want to create something interesting to watch, then enjoyment and interest are a purpose. You believe he designed and then culled 99.9 out of 100 species in order to design us and our food. Please tell us his “primary purpose” in designing the unnecessary 99.9 species, and his “primary purpose” for designing us and our food. And while you’re at it, following up one of your theories, please tell us his primary purpose for deliberately creating evil as a challenge for us humans.

Theodicy

DAVID: I accept God's works warts and all.

dhw: The fact that you kindly accept God’s “warts”, which in this case entail the deliberate creation of evil (as in your challenge theory) or his inability to prevent the evil he has created (despite his being all-powerful) does not answer the question bolded above. How can a first-cause God, who knowingly creates out of himself a world that contains evil, be all-good?

DAVID: The evils are byproducts of His good works, which means He is responsible for His good works, which affect us, but we and God have to accept evil that secondarily results and work to mitigate the evil. I agree with you God knew this would happen. Yes, warts and all.

I don’t understand why an all-powerful God, who according to you “directly creates whatever he wishes directly”, has to accept the evil which he hates, and which as first cause he and he alone has produced, whether directly (as a challenge to us humans) or indirectly (because he was powerless to prevent it). Warts are blemishes or imperfections. How can a designer deliberately or accidentally produce evil imperfections but still be regarded as all-powerful, all-good and perfect?