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

by David Turell , Friday, May 31, 2024, 16:29 (99 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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!

It's fully understood from the beginning.

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

dhw: 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.

50/50 is one point: does God listen to us?

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.

A bunch of quotes out of context are not worth answering. Adler's instructions lead to no contradictions. Some of us follow Adler. What others think about God is of no consequence.

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.

dhw: 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?

Again, your distorted way of analyzing evolution by God. The unusual human endpoint is pure evidence of God's intent as creator using an evolutionary method. I've produced recent studies on the human brain. Do you see them as a natural event? Try seeing it through your distaste of human exceptionalism.