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

by dhw, Wednesday, December 06, 2023, 08:01 (143 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your thinking about evolution is always backwards. Evolution is a culling process.

Evolution is a process which has resulted in the disappearance of 99.9 out of 100 species. It is your proposal that there is an all-powerful God who only wished to create one species plus its food, and therefore knowingly designed and culled 99.9 species that had no connection with his purpose. As this is an absurdly illogical thing to do, you continually edit your theory to leave out the dislocated thinking, or you blame God for using such a messy, cumbersome, inefficient method, rather than face the possibility that part or all of your theory might be wrong.

DAVID: What is present now are humans running the entire Earth to their benefit. And enough food is a major issue.

Correct. And what was present in the past was lots of other life forms that had no connection with humans and our food.

DAVID: Humans were God's final goal, and you won't accept that point.

Nobody knows how it will all end, but even if humans really were your God’s “final goal”, it wouldn’t explain why, according to you, he had to design and cull 99.9 species out of 100 that had no connection with his one and only goal.

DAVID: It is my view evolution is a messy way to create rather than instant. God used evolution, but that doesn't mean God is a messy designer. His designs in evolution are brilliant.

dhw: If your God uses a messy way to fulfil his one and only purpose, then he is a messy designer. I am the one who emphasizes the brilliance of his designs, and who rejects your claim of messiness by suggesting that instead of designing the wrong things and having to get rid of them, he designs precisely what he wants to design.

DAVID: Don't distort what is presented here. I have constantly presented God's brilliant designs.

We are both right, but we are talking on two different levels. If you commissioned an architect to design a bungalow for you, and he designed a magnificent five-storey house but then had to remove four of the five storeys from his design, you could argue that he is brilliant but also inefficient. But you are obviously quite happy to call your all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God inefficient, rather than acknowledge that it is your theory that makes him inefficient, and that it is possible your theory is wrong.

dhw (under “Bechly”): : why do you refuse to consider the possibility that instead of your God being a messy and inefficient designer, he is - for instance - a highly efficient experimental scientist, trying new things, eager to make new discoveries, or to give himself new ideas?

DAVID: Note an 'experimental scientist' doesn't know the outcomes. Not God-like at all.

dhw: Messiness, cumbersomeness and inefficiency are hardly “god-like”. Nobody knows what God is like – or even if he exists – so please stop pretending you know. (But see Part One of “More Miscellany", in which you kindly explain the reason for your prejudice.)

DAVID: I have my own God-personality view. My belief stems from that view of a highly purposeful God.

The “experimental scientist” is just an alternative proposal, but why do you consider wanting to try new things, making discoveries, getting new ideas as a “low” purpose or no purpose at all? Ah, but your belief springs from prejudices formed when you were a boy (see “More Miscellany, Part One”), so of course you think your view must be right.

Theodicy

dhw: [Goff’s] preference for a God with limited powers does not mean that he defines all-powerful as meaning with limited powers!

DAVID: That is what Goff and I accept.

dhw: He opts for limited powers. He does not define “all-powerful” as meaning “with limited powers”. You are making a mockery of language. I can’t believe that Goff would do the same.

Your silence would seem to confirm that you are, to echo your own lovely description, “the only nut in the wilderness”!

DAVID: The theodicy answers point out proportionality.

dhw: Question: how can a first-cause, all-good God be the creator of evil? Your answer: by creating 90% good and only creating 10% evil. (Use whatever percentage you like, and then go and stand in the corner for giving such a silly answer.

DAVID: Depends on a glass half full or half empty. You concentrate on the empty. God's good works far outweigh the small bad side effects. 'Dayenu' is the way I think.

You really don’t get it, do you? Evil exists! Theodicy does not ask what is the percentage of good and bad, or tell us how happy we should be because warmongers, murders and rapists are only a small minority! It asks how the one and only, all-powerful, all-knowing, first-cause creator of all things could have created a system which he knew would result in evil, and yet himself be all-good.