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

by David Turell , Wednesday, March 27, 2024, 22:40 (239 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: […] unfortunately all these logical beliefs of yours miss out your immutable belief that your God also designed and culled 99.9 species out of 100 that had no connection with humans and our needs, and you have no idea why he would have done so. You can only speculate that he did so because he is a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer.

This is the theory which has led to years of disagreement between us and which you constantly try to dodge because it is so fundamental to your personal, anthropocentric theology. You admit that you can find no logical explanation,

Ridiculous charge that I 'cannot find an explanation'. I cannot question God directly. He has His own personal reasons using evolution. I can't know them, nor can you. Our puny human logic find objections. Did you ever think we are wrong?

dhw...but you cling to it and even ridicule God for his inefficiency, as if somehow you know that your view of his purpose and method is the one and only possible truth. In the comments that preceded this part of my post, you trotted out all the generalisations that make sense, but both there and here you have simply dodged the issue.

Nothing dodged. many of your points are so illogical, no answer on the point is possible.

DAVID: Plantinga explained in that thread today. You have planted Plantinga's total theology specifically in my brain. Think! I use bits and pieces, as usual for me and for discussion.

dhw: You produced the article, did not offer a single criticism, and accepted and still accept his explanation of theodicy, which was the whole point of the article!

I stand by my explanation, accept the theodicy view, but not the love view. I am not going to cleanse each article of all its comments. You now know Planting. He ain't me!

GIANT ARMORED SPECIES BEFORE DINOSAURS

DAVID: It shouldn't surprise you that I cannot reason at God's level of reasoning that you demand.

dhw: What surprises me is that you THINK you are thinking at God’s level. But maybe God didn’t design the aetosaur, or maybe he had a good reason for designing it, and is not the messy, inefficient designer you denigrate.

DAVID: God's use of evolution means He chose a cumbersome method of evolution.

dhw: No it doesn’t. It is your theory about his use of evolution that makes his method messy, cumbersome and inefficient. And it is your blinkered vision that makes you denigrate his powers in this manner.

DAVID: I don't denigrate His powers as your experimenting God does.

dhw: I’m surprised that you don’t regard “messy”, “cumbersome” and “inefficient” as denigrating, but I’m getting used to your habit of reversing the meaning of words. I don’t regard experimenting, learning, discovering, enjoyment, interest etc. as “denigrating”.

DAVID: That view of God makes Him humanized and thus lessened.

dhw: And a God who wants to be loved, who enjoys creating (as you have agreed), and whose method of design is messy and inefficient is not “humanized” and is more godlike?

How do you know with certainty God wants love and loves us? I don't.