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

by David Turell , Friday, June 21, 2024, 20:03 (78 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: So please stop dodging the question why, if – according to you – your all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect God’s ONE AND ONLY purpose was to design us plus food – he designed and then had to cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with his purpose.

I have answered the question over and over. The 99.5% loss is the natural result of any evolutionary process, as Raup showed. God chose to evolve us from Archaea for His own reasons. We must conclude He chose the best way possible. The broad expanse of living forms today is from that process and provides the resources for an ever-enlarging human population. That is full justification for the 99.9%% extinctions. Please explain why I am wrong with God in charge.

DAVID: An all-knowing God picked the perfect method for Himself. Only an all-powerful God could command all the complexities of the universe, of Earth's environmental changes, and of deeply complex biochemical and physiological changes involved in speciation.

dhw: The “perfect method” is the totally illogical one bolded above, which you have described as imperfect and inefficient. But you refuse to consider the possibility that your combination of purpose and method may be wrong, for example if your God wanted to create a free-for-all, the 99.9% extinction and 0.1% survival rate (which Raup attributed to luck) would make perfect sense.

Back to your out-of-control deity as humanized as ever.

dhw: You refuse to tell us what you mean by “allegorically”. The term is meaningless in this context, as shown below:

“Allegory”
Definitions: “A poem, play, picture etc. in which the apparent meaning of the characters and events is used to symbolize a deeper moral or spiritual meaning” (Encarta). “A story, painting etc. in which the events and characters represent ideas or teach a moral lesson” (Longman)

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

DAVID: The 'applicability' is the key and thus allegorical is correct. Pure Adler.

dhw: There is no “allegory”! Please give us your own definition of "allegory", and explain the difference between "God may want us to worship him" and "Allegorically God may want us to worship him".

You have not responded to either request.

Adler says treat the words allegorically as applied to God. I am sure Adler knew the meaning of allegorical when he said to use it.

DAVID: READ: it is the level of application that counts. At our human level worship means worship. We have no idea what it means to God!!!

dhw: So back you go to the “meaning” of the word we have invented, instead of to its application. The question is whether your God wants us to worship (= love, admire, praise) him or not. And the same applies to all the possible attributes.

It is the precise application to God that is the issue.

DAVID: Since our knowledge of God's personality is unknown, we each have the right to pick out our version, even your distortion of a highly humanized, thinking just-like-us form.

dhw: My version is not “highly humanized”. I offer alternatives, and they are no more distorted than your own, which now strictly excludes ALL thought patterns and emotions like ours. So you know that your unknowable God is incapable of love, enjoyment, curiosity, wanting to be worshipped, because he is certainly “not human in any way”.

DAVID: All of those terms may be applied to Him allegorically since we do not know how closely they apply to Him.

dhw: There is no “allegory”. We simply do not know if those terms apply to him or not. (The degree of application still has nothing to do with "allegory".) But although you tell us he is unknowable, you know that those terms do NOT apply to him because you know that he is certainly not human in any way. The contradiction is blatant, and you do yourself no favours by repeating it.

The bold is correct, therefore the words must be used allegorically.