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

by dhw, Sunday, December 10, 2023, 10:10 (347 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You never stop dodging. Your technique is always to leave out one part of your theory, and it is getting tiresome. There is nothing illogical in the theory that humans were your God’s intended goal. What is illogical is the combination of this theory with the theory that your all-powerful, all-knowing God also deliberately designed and then had to get rid of 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with this goal. Why would he do that? You have no idea. You simply call it a messy, cumbersome, inefficient design, and try to forget about it.

DAVID: Your crazy response is that God should not have evolved us.

Where on earth have you dredged that idea from? If your God exists, I have no objection whatsoever to his using the process of evolution for whatever his purpose may have been, and I have no objection whatsoever to the fact that this process produced us. I object only to the sheer illogicality of your combined theories, as bolded above, and I’m surprised that you should insist on a theory that makes your God into a messy, inefficient designer. My own view is that if God exists, he would have had good reason for designing whatever he designed, and would not have found himself having to design and then get rid of 99.9 of his designs because they were irrelevant to his one and only purpose.

DAVID: […] 0.1% is the present created by a necessary 99.9% eliminated in the evolution process in which better organisms are created by design.

dhw: The 0.1% were not created by the 99.9%!

DAVID: Of course, they were. They are the current survivors.

They are the current survivors of the 0.1% of species that did not come to a dead end during the history of evolution.

dhw: According to you, your God created the 100% and then had to cull the 99.9% which had no connection with his goal. But you have accidentally hit upon ONE of my theories, by having him “creating better organisms by design”. If he consciously designed and got rid of inferior organisms in his quest to create a being like himself (humans), he was clearly experimenting. But you won’t even consider that idea, although you’ve just suggested it yourself.

DAVID: Concepts of God do not need experimentation.

Who decides on what is "needed"? In fact, we do not “need” any concepts of God at all, since nobody can possibly know him. But you insist that you know his purpose, and that you know his method of achieving that purpose was messy, cumbersome and inefficient. Why are you now disowning your own suggestion that he got rid of earlier, inferior designs and “created better organisms by design”, which clearly amounts to experimentation.

DAVID (later in the post): You forget your God experiments, allows free-for-alls.

I’ve just pointed out that you yourself have suggested experimentation without realizing it. That was experimentation with a particular purpose. A free-for-all would have a different purpose – the enjoyment of discovery, seeing how his invention produces new delights (or horrors!) and possibly giving him new ideas of his own (he can always dabble, and humans might well have been such a product, since they came so late on the scene). But your mind is closed to any such alternatives.

Theodicy

DAVID: God knows exactly how to proceed within rigid limits.

dhw: At least you’ve now realized that proportionality does not answer the theodicy question. God having limited powers provides a feasible answer to that question. What is not feasible is a definition of “all-powerful” as “having limited powers.” Likewise, God wanting to create the mixture of good and bad because the latter brings out the full value of the former would also be a feasible explanation for evil, but that doesn’t solve the problem of how he can be called all-good.

DAVID: Using evil as a measuring aspect of the good is a reasonable approach. That is the proportionality argument.

dhw: There is no measuring involved in the second theory. Stop twisting.

DAVID: Sorry you don't like the limited powers aspect.

dhw: I do like it. Why don’t you read what I write? I find it feasible. But if you believe it is correct, you will have to stop your ridiculous distortion of language, pretending that “all-powerful” means “with limited powers”.

DAVID: I think all-powerful with limits is a feasible concept.

If your powers are limited, you cannot be ALL-powerful.