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

by dhw, Sunday, May 19, 2024, 12:56 (186 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your invented contradictions exist because you refuse to accept God's attributes as I describe them. Tell your strict attributes or do they wander all over the place.

dhw: I refuse to accept that an omniscient and omnipotent God would deliberately design and cull 99.9 out of 100 species irrelevant to his purpose, that a God who might want us to worship him can’t want us to worship him because he is selfless, that he certainly enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, but he can’t possibly want to enjoy and be interested in anything because although he probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours, he can’t possibly have thought patterns and emotions like ours. I do not impose any “strict” attributes on him. I don’t even know if he exists, and so I only offer alternative possibilities.

DAVID: I have been taught by a world-famous philosopher of religion, a ranking theologian. I am proud to have taken the time to learn this approach when deciding to leave agnosticism. Your alternatives are colored by your own humanism with no theological training.

As usual, you completely ignore all the contradictions and illogicalities of your theories as if they are explained by the fact that you have read a book by a theologian. I have no problem with Adler’s arguments for God’s existence. Now please stick to the arguments concerning his purposes, methods and nature, and stop pretending that every theologian in the world supports the nonsense I have summarized above.

Evolution and Raup

dhw: He doesn’t say extinctions “produce” anything, and if he did, it would be sheer nonsense. Extinctions mark an end. Only the survivors can produce something. But extinctions are necessary because new circumstances are necessary for new species, and new circumstances will inevitably lead to extinctions. It is, according to Raup, a matter of luck which species perish and which survive and are able to produce the new species that will cope with the new circumstances until circumstances change again. An all-powerful God with one purpose would not have been compelled by some law of his own making to stage extinction after extinction, designing and culling the 99.9%! And so he must have chosen the process deliberately, which confronts you with the question you can’t answer: why does an all-powerful God, who you tell us is perfectly capable of designing species “de novo”, choose to design and cull the 99.9% if his one and only purpose is to produce the 0.1%?

DAVID: You don't see believers are satisfied with God has His own morally sufficient reasons. It is you questioning God, not me. Your God must have human reasoning. Mine doesn't.

Nothing to do with “morally sufficient reasons”, which is your get-out for avoiding the theodicy problem. I am not questioning God – I am questioning your theory that your omnipotent God had only one purpose but messily and inefficiently proceeded to design and cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had no relevance to his purpose. Stop dodging!

DAVID: How can I answer? I have imposed God upon the history of evolution as its creator. As result He inherits the unwieldy process.

dhw: Your God is first cause. How can he inherit anything? As first cause he would have INVENTED the process!

DAVID: Exactly!!

So why did you say he “inherited” it, as if he had been forced to use a method that had been thrust upon him?

DAVID: God does not have our level of rationality.

So you assume that his level leads your omnipotent, omniscient God to being a messy inefficient designer. Just because you can’t bear the thought that your theory of evolution might be wrong.

Humanization

DAVID: God creates but not with any self-motive, a strict guideline of theological thought.

dhw: Stop hiding behind vague generalizations. One example: does theological thought reject the theory that God wants to be recognized and worshipped?

DAVID: No, so? Not vague generalizations, applied self-teaching.

Does all “theological thought” teach you that your God might not enjoy creating, might not be interested in you, might not love you, might indulge in messy, inefficient design, probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours but definitely doesn’t have thought patterns and emotions like ours, is all good but is to blame for bad bugs? Please answer yes or no.

DAVID (on the Buddhism thread): Your human personality forces itself into all your theories about God. You must learn to separate yourself.

I quote you: “I first choose a form of God I wish to believe in. The rest follows.” This is a prime example of an “I” forcing itself into all its theories about God, and explains many of the contradictions that plague those theories. Of course all our arguments and beliefs stem from our “selves”, but it so happens that my “self” has no fixed beliefs and can only present alternative explanations for what I see as reality. You accept that they are all logical, and your only objection is that they entail thought patterns or emotions like ours, although your God probably has thought patterns and emotions like ours.