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

by dhw, Thursday, December 07, 2023, 11:33 (142 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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: Nothing is left out. Your correct proportion of 99.9 out of 100 creates a wrong impression of reality. Many billions disappeared while the 0.1 percent remaining i also in the billions.

And the question which you simply go on dodging is why your God, whose one and only aim according to you was the remaining 0.1%, should have deliberately designed and then had to cull the 99.9%. This messy, inefficient way makes no sense even to you, but it is your fixed belief.

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

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

DAVID: Wrong. What is here now is in great part out food supply.

Of course what is here now is mainly our food. And what was here in the past was mainly not us or our food! What is “wrong”?

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

dhw: 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: You condemn God for evolving us. I accept it as His goal.

Stop making things up! What I condemn is not your God but your insistence that he chose a method which turns him into a bumbling fool who deliberately designed and had to cull 99.9% of species that had no connection with the only species (plus food) that he wanted to design. [...]

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Wrong analogy. In real evolution the five storys are still here in the surviving 0.1%. What is lost in the past is really here in the present. You misconstrue Raup's point.

The “surviving” 0.1% is the single floor of the bungalow. The other storeys are not here. In your theory, 99.9% of the past is lost and is NOT here in the present! That’s why your theory is such a mess.

dhw: Messiness, cumbersomeness and inefficiency are hardly “god-like”. […]

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I can only conceive a God as highly purposeful, who needs no experimentation, unlioke your humanized form.

As usual, you ignore my now bolded question, and your messy, inefficient designer is no less human than a highly successful experimental scientist.

Theodicy

DAVID: [Theodicy] 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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I sure do get it. I started this stream of discussion. Goff's limited God is a reasonable answer.

You were trying to defend your non-answer of proportionality! Yes, Goff’s answer is reasonable, and it presents us with a God who is not all-powerful, though in order to defend your own prejudiced view of God, you have tried to define all-powerful as meaning with limited powers!