Return to David's theory of evolution, purpose & theodicy (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, March 23, 2024, 08:06 (243 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Assuming your God exists, if he had only wanted to design us plus food, then of course direct creation would have been the obvious way for an all-powerful, all-knowing God to do it! But he did not create us directly, which can only mean one or more of these theistic alternatives: 1) he is not all-powerful; 2) he is not all-knowing; 3) his purpose was not confined to designing us and our food; 4) he did not design every individual species (but instead designed Shapiro’s autonomous cellular intelligence, or left speciation to Darwin’s random mutations and natural selection); 5) he is the messy, cumbersome, inefficient, illogical designer you say he is.

DAVID: All I can slightly agree with is #5 and change it to: God chose to use the process of evolution for His own reasons, a system we can view as messy and cumbersome, but successful. […]

dhw: The theory you have chosen is one for which you can find no logical justification – hence your criticism of it.

DAVID: The justification is our appearance! We are the only organism on Earth that knows how we got here, and incidentally might create a relationship with our designer.

We don’t know how we got here. But even if we are the only organism that wonders how we did and who might form a relationship with God (if he exists), he did not have to be all-powerful, all-knowing, or one-track-minded, or messy or inefficient, in order to produce us. I have offered you alternative explanations, with one example repeated below:

dhw: Not complicated if your God’s purpose was to enjoy and learn from the invention of something he endowed with the freedom to do its own designing (humans included). Perfectly logical by comparison with the messy, inefficient combination of purpose and method you impose on him.

DAVID: God, as I see Him, always know exactly what He wishes to create and does it by a method of His choice.

Agreed. And that does not have to be the incomprehensible, inefficient combination of purpose and method that you impose upon him.

DAVID: Your logic does not equal God's. The God you create is an imaginary form of a human acting as if He were God.

The God you create is an imaginary form of a god whose messy, inefficient combination of purpose and method makes no sense even to you, and whose desire to be loved, regardless of the suffering his desire may cause, makes him just about as self-centred as any human could possibly be.

DAVID: See the Plantinga thread for answers.

The Plantinga thread provides the above example of a self-centred God,who wants to be loved at all costs, and you have accepted it.