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

by David Turell , Sunday, March 24, 2024, 14:47 (242 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: (*** You agreed with Plantinga that God's purpose for creating us was that we should love him of our own free will. It was not "incidental".)

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.

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

DAVID: Evolution occurred and God did it. Nothing incomprehensible about that fact. I view it as a cumbersome method, but as God did it for His own reasons, I'm happy with the result we are alive.

dhw: If God exists, I have no objection whatsoever to the theory that evolution occurred and God did it. (God’s existence is not a fact.) This discussion is solely about your God’s possible purpose and method: it is NOT a fact that his only purpose was to design us, or that he specially designed every single species, let alone that he knowingly and deliberately designed and culled 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with that single purpose. That is your theory, which you agree is incomprehensible (you don’t know why he would have done that), messy, cumbersome and inefficient. The fact that you are happy to be alive does not depend on the illogical theory of evolution you cling to.

I believe the works produced by ID prove beyond a reasonable doubt a designer exists. That God designer produced us after a long period of evolution of everything on Earth that humans would need. Perfectly logical!!! Adler turns that around by using humans as proof of God the designer, by analyzing it from a Darwinist view of natural evolution.

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.

dhw: 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: Back to you concocted view of God which I've criticized in another thread.

dhw: I have not “concocted” a view of God on the Plantinga thread. I have merely pointed out that Plantinga’s view (with which you agree) presents us with a self-centred God whose desire to be freely loved has led to appalling consequences, to which he appears to be indifferent, since he chose to allow such evils as the Holocaust. You have avoided replying to this argument, just as you avoid acknowledging the illogicality of your theory of evolution, with its explicit criticism of your God’s messy inefficiency.

Sufficiently answered in the Plantinga thread: "Humans caused the Holocaust through God-given free-will and ended it through the same free-will. God has left us responsible for ourselves, as I've previously noted. It is our brains that allow us to cure illness, develop early warning systems for tornados and Earthquakes, etc." *** We are not God's puppets. We run the Earth not God, who purposely gave us life and that responsibility. God is not responsible for human failure, we are. As you exemplify, we are free to ignore God. without God's punishment.