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

by dhw, Sunday, November 05, 2023, 11:30 (174 days ago) @ David Turell

I shall take each point separately in the hope of establishing a series of corrections that will clarify the picture.

DAVID: The food is the entire bush of life.
Thank you for correcting this to:
DAVID: The CURRENT bush is our food supply, all of it.

dhw: The 99.9% had nothing to do with us and our food supply. Our current bush descended from the 0.1%. It is therefore sheer nonsense to claim that every species that ever lived was specially designed as preparation for us and our food.

DAVID: I do not make that nonsensical claim. The 99.9% are the ancient but direct ancestors of Humans plus food.

dhw:[…]. For years now, I’ve been asking why you think your God would have designed and had to cull 99.9% of species that had no connection with us or our food. Here are two of your most frequent answers: “My defense is whatever God does is OK with me, I don’t need his reasons, only you do.” And “The only answer I do not have is why God chose this method of creation.” […] Please tell me which humans/foods are direct descendants of the brontosaurus.[…] I’d like to know where you get this extraordinary new theory from, and why it’s taken you so long to propose it.

DAVID: Preposterous misunderstanding. The present 0.1% living represent the present population of humans and their food.

Correct.

DAVID:The brontosaurus had mouse-like mammals as neighbors which are on a direct line to us.

Correct. But apart from birds, there are no direct descendants from the dinosaurs, just as there are no direct descendants from 99.9% of species that ever lived (if Raup’s figures are correct).

DAVID: You know evolution is fan-shaped of developing lines in related ecosystems.

Your bush has now become a fan, but the same principle applies: the developing lines diverge from the base of the fan, and 99.9% percent of them do not lead to us or our food. Ecosystems come and go, but that does not alter the fact that 99.9% of the lines do not lead directly to us and our food.

DAVID: All that are left alive now are (0.1%) lines of our food and humans.

Correct. Our evolution (plus) food represents 0.1% of life forms that ever lived. We are NOT directly descended from the other 99.9%.

DAVID: We have the power to eat anything that is alive. For example we eat lion meat.

Totally irrelevant to your claim that “the 99.9% are the ancient but direct ancestors of Humans plus food.” Please withdraw it.

DAVID: Note today's entries on vegetation and ecosystems and how vital it is for us to maintain them.

dhw: According to you and Raup, current vegetation and ecosystems represent 0.1% of life forms that ever lived, the other 99.9% having had to be “culled”. This has nothing to do with the vital need for humans to maintain the current ecosystems that feed them!

DAVID: Your dodge is to not understand the current human food supply is not globally adequate.

My reply to that entry was:
dhw: climate change and alien plant invasion are largely caused by human activity, and we are rapidly destroying the very resources that provide us with our food. These studies are indeed of vital importance for our future, and this is one area of our discussions on which we are in complete agreement.
What have I dodged?

Theodicy

dhw: […] theodicy asks how a God who chooses a method which produces evil can possibly be all-good, and I have asked how a first-cause God, who has no choice but to produce a system which produces the evil he hates, can be all-powerful?

DAVID: An all-powerful God made the universe, created life, and had to do it with side effects making evil.

When discussing your theories of evolution, you wrote “not had to design and cull!! God is not forced to do anything.” Now your first-cause, all-powerful God “had to” create a system which involved producing evil. I’m not complaining. I merely ask how he can be forced to create out of himself a system which will produce evil (which you say he hates) and yet be considered all-powerful and all good.

Theodicy: the ‘good’ view of bacteria

DAVID: The good God gave us far outweighs the evil side effect. Are you happy to be living??

dhw: War, murder, rape etc. exist. What percentage of reality they form is irrelevant to the question why and how a first-cause God can knowingly create a system that will produce such evil and yet be called all-good.
The fact that I am happy to be living does not explain how an all-good God can produce a system that he knows will lead to evil,

DAVID: God gave you your life. Do you wish he would take it away?

Of course not.

DAVID: The presence of evil is the price you pay. Eden does not, cannot exist.

I accept the presence/price of evil. But I’m asking you the question asked by theodicy: how can the presence of evil - which you say he hates and which stems from the system your first cause God (if he exists) chose to use in creating life out of himself - fit in with the theory that he is all-powerful and all-good?