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

by dhw, Saturday, March 23, 2024, 08:00 (243 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Just like you, theologians “first choose a form of God I wish to believe in. The rest follows.” For some reason, you have overlooked the horrifying implications of Plantinga’s justfication of evil, which equally horrifyingly meets with your approval. Let’s start again:

dhw: Plantinga gives us one reason and one reason only for evil: God gave us free will because “even though free will entails the possibility that they might choose evil; relationships grounded in real love are not possible unless both parties enter into them willingly.” And you agree! He wants us to love him (and elsewhere you have him wanting us to recognize and worship him). But you think your God is selfless!!! And who cares if the evil that God deliberately "allows" causes untold misery to millions of humans, whether they love God or not? Obviously your all-good God doesn’t, or he would never have created the concept in the first place. This is what you are proud to accept!

DAVID: Your bold of Plantinga is exactly correct! I have the free will to love you.

Um…sorry, mistaken identity...I’m not God, but thanks for the compliment.

DAVID: And his point that allowing evil happens for sufficient reason is similarly correct. Note in the original article Plantinga's critic accepted P's points. As usual you want to have God provide a Garden of Eden. As long as living requires eating there will be evil.

This has nothing to do with what I want - which is feasible answers to all the great questions! You are the one who starts with wishes and bends your answers to fit them. You and the critic accept that your God wants us to love him, and is happy to allow evil in order to gratify this totally self-centred interest. And yet you claim your God is selfless. If he is happy to allow the Holocaust (see below) as the price to be paid for ensuring people love him of their own free will, (a) he is not selfless, and (b) human suffering is clearly of little or no importance to him, despite P.’s and your belief that he loves us.

DAVID: You will never understand how theists think and are comfortable with their feelings. It is proportionality, as expressed before. All you see is evil, which to me is a very small part of our reality.

dhw: One “very small part” of our reality was the Holocaust, in which approx. 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis. If you and I had been living in Germany at the time, we would have been among them. I would imagine some of those Jews, including you, would have loved God of their own free will. And your omniscient God would have known that this would happen, but this was the price he was willing to pay, in order to ensure that he was loved in the proper way. And for you this feels good. Both you and your God would have been happy as you made your way to the gas chamber, because you had chosen to love him of your own free will, and the Holocaust was just one “very small part” of reality.

DAVID: Wow! Didn't you read Viktor E. Frankl? You have much meaning in your life despite your enlarged view of evil.

Yes, I love life in spite of the evil in the world. And I haven’t read Mr Frankl. Please explain to me in your own words why you think a God who loves us and is selfless would be happy to allow 6 million of us to be slaughtered in order to ensure that we loved him of our own free will?