Return to David's theory of theodicy;Plantinga & Held (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, April 22, 2024, 12:24 (213 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from the 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No.

Then if we and our food were your God’s only purpose, the 99.9% were irrelevant to his purpose. This has nothing to do with Raup, so please stop contradicting yourself, and please stop moaning that I am distorting Raup, who you have agreed provides absolutely no support for your wacky theory.

DAVID: You know nothing of Raup except through me and you have distorted what I have told you Raup said. His study was to explain why extinctions happened as a necessary part of evolution. He concluded 'bad luck'. Well-adapted species suddenly were unprepared for new circumstances. The loses cumulatively were 99.9% with 0.1% as survivors. Our large human population and all of the bush of life available for our use are the survivors. You try to throw away the 99.9% as an unnecessary component. But that is how evolution works leaving much behind to reach the present. Eviscerating evolution is your weird conclusion with the 99.9% counting for nothing. And you call me wacky!

Thank you for this clear summary of Raup’s thinking, which makes perfect sense to me, and which is diametrically opposed to your own. No mention of a purpose or of God, let alone of a God who deliberately, knowingly and inefficiently designed and culled 99.9% of species for the sole purpose of designing us and our food. Raup thinks it’s all a matter of luck, depending on whether or not organisms can cope with new conditions, and he confirms that the survivors are the 0.1%. If anything, this theory endorses the free-for-all hypothesis, regardless of whether God exists or not, and if anyone has been “distorting” Raup, it’s you. In any case, it is your wacky theory we are discussing, and not what Raup says or doesn’t say. Stop dodging.

dhw: I pointed out that carnivorousness was a forerunner of killing for personal gain.

DAVID: It has to be dog-eat-dog. Life requires a constant input of energy.

dhw: Do you regard growing and eating potatoes and beans as being on a par with killing and eating a fellow animal? NB I’m not campaigning for vegetarianism. I’m merely pointing out that carnivorousness is a pre-human process which in principle anticipates many human evils, as these generally arise from the pursuit of self-interest at the expense of others.

DAVID: Eating meat does not create evil. It is a natural requirement.

Of course it is. I'm not opposing it. I'm just pointing out that it “anticipates” human evil, because it entails self-interest at the expense of others.

Theodicy and relief from boredom

DAVID: Stop blaming God for human created evil.

It is you who have presented us with the theory that your God wanted human evil to happen because he and we would have found Eden boring. As the omnipotent and omniscient first cause creator of all things, he therefore created the conditions which he knew would result in rape, murder and holocausts. I am not objecting to your theory. It exactly reproduces one of my own, as below.

dhw: God might have created life because he wanted to create something he would find interesting.

DAVID: Back to you humanized self-serving God who must entertain Himself.

That is the new “humanized”, anti-boredom theory which you have proposed and which you confirmed a week ago:

dhw: I’m sure you’ll agree that your God, who you believe is interested in his creations, would find puppets pretty boring.

DAVID: Exactly!

And you defended your theory that he deliberately and knowingly “allowed” human evil for our own sakes:
DAVID: That God did not want a boring Garden of Evil for us, is a reasonable guess.

I’m not objecting to your theory. But I do object to your double standards: if I propose the same theory, I am "humanizing" God. If you propose it, then it’s a reasonable guess.

Double standards

DAVID: Different theistic positions have reasoned theism.

No problem. But you rejected “reasoned” deism and “reasoned” process theology because they were not mainstream.

DAVID: I have the right to pick and choose intellectually while you choose not to make choices and remain happily neutral at drift. I have the intellectual right to choose my mainstream!!!

But your panentheism is NOT mainstream! What mainstream religion do you know that accuses your God of inefficient design (your theory of evolution), of “blaming” him for natural disasters (your choice of vocabulary), of deliberately creating conditions which he knew would lead to rape, murder etc. in order to relieve his and our boredom? I have the impression that you pride yourself on NOT being mainstream! Hence your double standards when you reject other theories because they are not mainstream.