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

by dhw, Thursday, May 30, 2024, 13:30 (100 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Your first statement, now bolded: “we know the meaning of the words…..are the meanings the same?” Thank you for your second statement, confirming my own: it’s not a question of a different meaning but simply whether the term itself applies to him. So please stop all this “allegory quandary” nonsense. The simple question is does he or does he not want us to worship him? Adler 50/50 = it’s possible that he does and possible that he doesn’t. Your answer is it’s 100% impossible, because your God has no self-interest.

DAVID: You miss the nuance. God accepts worship if it happens. He did not produce us to require it.

What “nuance”? The question is whether he wants to be worshipped or not. Originally your answer was that it was possible. Then came a 100% no, because he has no self-interest. Then came all the nonsense about the word not meaning the same to God as it does to us. Now apparently he doesn’t mind if we do or don’t. And apparently all this faffing around stems from the strict guidelines you’ve been given on “how to think about God”. If there is one guideline you have demonstrated, it is that there is no one way to think about God.

DAVID: The rules to think about God are specific from Adler. How people invent God-think is not the subject.

Listen to yourself: “Everyone chooses the God he wishes to believe in.”
“There are as many forms of God as people invent him.”
(Re other theologians’ views of God:) “Their God is not my God as I describe him.”

Every “form of God” is based on how the believer thinks about God. Of course it’s the subject. And your way of thinking about God leads to one contradiction after another.

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.

dhw: 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: Words!!! His whole book is a theistic guideline. And he sees God as all-everything!

dhw: God can’t be described in words, but he is all-everything (all-good and all-bad?), and this guidelines tells you that he 100% has no self-interest but 50/50% may or may not want to be worshipped etc. (= self-interest). And he 50/50 may have thought patterns and emotions like ours, but he 100% is “certainly not human in any way”.

DAVID: Yes, allegorically.

You have accepted that it is not the meaning of the words that is in question, but their applicability to your God. Stop dodging.

Evolution

DAVID: The whole purpose was to evolve humans by a step-by-step method.

dhw: If his “whole purpose” was us plus food, why did he evolve (design) and cull the 99.9%? Yes, we are here, but you have ignored my response:
dhw: […] 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.

DAVID: Of course He created 'an ever-changing succession of life forms' which is a description of evolution.

Correct.

DAVID: You make evolution into a slide-show of entertainment rather than a method with a distinct purpose, us. Your same-old, humanized God in action.

As usual, you dodge the nonsensical theory which causes you to insult your God’s work as messy, cumbersome and inefficient. I have disowned the word "entertainment", have given you three theistic, purposeful alternatives to your theory, but you stick to the one that makes no sense even to you.