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

by dhw, Friday, May 31, 2024, 12:28 (174 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: 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: Assuming God exists. What our words mean to God is not nonsense! We don't know what they mean at His level.

Back you go. We invented the words, and we know what they mean when we use them. The question is not whether God attaches a different meaning to them, but whether they apply to him or not. You have agreed, and then astonishingly you even pretend that this was YOUR thought in the first place, as follows:

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

DAVID: Finally, you understand.

But you’re still saying “We don’t know what they mean at His level”! You haven’t even understood what you pretend you wanted me to understand!

DAVID: God produced us with no wishes for Himself, all covered before. Adler's way exists and I follow it, as described. One way.

Once more you make a definitive statement about your God’s selflessness, as if you knew. I have no idea what Adler’s way is, since you keep telling us he is 50/50 neutral about God’s nature, and this supports your 100% rejection of any possible attribute that you happen to dislike.

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

dhw: 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.

Not answered.

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:
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 guideline 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.

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

DAVID: Finally, you understand.

An extraordinary case of mistaken identity. See above.

Evolution

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

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. […]

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

dhw; 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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: So simple! Everything in creation is God's work. Therefore, He evolved us by that cumbersome method we see. It was His choice to do it that way for His own reasons. Makes perfect sense to me if not to you.

It makes perfect sense if you leave out the problem which causes you to ridicule his method as messy, cumbersome and inefficient: namely your theory that humans plus food were his one and only goal from the start, and therefore he had to design and cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with his one and only purpose. And you can’t think of any reason why. When will you stop dodging?