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

by dhw, Tuesday, May 28, 2024, 10:52 (103 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: There is no “allegory”! YOU think he might want to be worshipped, and you and I both know what you mean.

DAVID: Why repeat? At our level we know the meaning of the words. BUT when applied at God's level of His reality are the meanings the same? We don't know. Pure Adler.

We invented the word “worship”, and so we know what we mean. The question is not whether God has changed the meaning of the words we invented, but whether they actually apply to him: i.e. does he or does he not want us to praise, love, thank him? Not: does he think our word “worship” means something else?

DAVID: Adler wrote as whole book on the subject!!

dhw: Writing a book does not make you the only person who knows how to think about God. […]

DAVID: Keep denigrating Adler out of your ignorance. His guide, as a philosopher of religion, is all you need to get started in thinking about God.

I’m not denigrating Adler! I’m denigrating your arguments. If there are as many forms of God as people who invent them, how can there be only one way to think about God? NOBODY KNOWS. Look at our exchange under “Nibbana”:

dhw: if we reach the point where something is ineffable, it can’t be discussed with words, and so you can say that any verbalized conception is mistaken!

DAVID: This last point is pure Adler. God is ineffable, and 'can't be discussed in words and so you can say that any verbalized conception is mistaken!'. Welcome to one of Adler's guiding points.

Then you will have to stop telling us that your God is omnipotent, omniscient, selfless, not human in any way, purposeful, all-good, 50/50 this, that and the other… There is now no point in discussing God at all unless you can find a way of discussing him without using words. What does Adler use?

DAVID: Current presentation: God creates with no self-interests involved. The 50/50 probability is a neutral view from Adler. […] Your use of the word 'chance' tells us none of the guesses re God are more than possibilism.

dhw: Correct. 50/50 means that each guess is possible. You’ve got it! […] However, your current presentation is that your God has no self-interest (= 100% can’t want us to worship him – tell that to all the priests and rabbis and imams) […] Your current presentations contradict each other.

DAVID: The bold is not a correct interpretation. God created us with no expectation or desire we worship Him.

That is your 100% rejection of the theory that God wants us to worship him.

DAVID: "Can't want' is your invention, as God has not blocked our worship and may be allegorically pleased with it.

50/50 is your acceptance that it’s possible your God may want us to worship him. I don’t know why you’ve changed “want” to “not blocked”, since we are talking about what God wants, not what we want, and I have no idea what you mean by “allegorically pleased”. See above for your theory that your God might wish to change the meanings of the words we have invented.

Evolution

DAVID: History tells us we evolved.

dhw: Yes.

DAVID: That method was inefficient in that it covered 3.8 billion years with a loss of 99.9% of all that lived. Pure Raup who decided the extinctions were from bad luck.

There is only “inefficiency” if you insist that the extinctions were a failure to achieve a particular purpose! That’s why you keep denigrating your God. Where does Raup talk of “inefficiency”?

DAVID: Add God as the engineer or designer and suddenly it is all wrong because it required a 99.9% extinction rate. […] It all comes down to your twisted view: God should not have evolved us but used direct creation.

It is you who constantly twist both Raup and me. Evolution can only happen through changing conditions, which trigger extinctions and innovations. Once you “add” God, you have to explain why he created this system. (Goodbye to Raup.) Your God designed and culled 99.9 species out of 100 that had no connection with his sole purpose (us plus food). That is why YOU call it “inefficient”. But you would rather insult your God than consider the possibility that he WANTED the 100%, i.e. that his sole purpose was NOT just to create us plus food, but was to create precisely the history of life that we know: an ever changing succession of life forms. From that interpretation of what he wanted, we can move to explanations of why he wanted the ever changing history, and how he set about creating it through evolution.