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

by dhw, Thursday, June 27, 2024, 12:04 (113 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Your theology teaches you to ridicule God, and you keep telling me I don’t know how to think about God and I am out of touch with theology!

DAVID: You don't assimilate what I write. Again, God chose a cumbersome system from His omniscience that it was the best way to create us. He managed it very well in the end. we are here.

You don’t assimilate the absurdity of your claim that an all-knowing, all-powerful God would choose an imperfect, messy, cumbersome, inefficient way to achieve the purpose you impose on him. You say I am out of touch with theology, so please tell us which theologians you know who champion the theory that their God is an imperfect, messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer.

"Allegory" and Human attributes

DAVID: What are you smoking. I fully understand Adler's use of allegorical.

dhw: Last week I asked you to define the word and tell us the difference between “God may want us to worship him” and “Allegorically God may want us to worship him.” Your reply was:

DAVID: I am sure Adler knew the meaning of allegorical when he said to use it.

Now please tell us what he meant, or stop hiding behind your smokescreen.

DAVID: Repeat: Adler said we must use words describing God allegorically.

I know he said it. And you said you fully understood what he meant by it. So please tell us what he meant, and what is the difference between “God may want us to worship him” and “Allegorically God may want us to worship him.” And stop dodging.

DAVID: Of course, He may have human attributes.

dhw: You can no longer reject my alternative theistic theories on the grounds that they involve human-like attributes. You are of course welcome to stick to the inefficient God you wish to believe in.

DAVID: Of course I reject your humanized God.

dhw: You reject a God who has certain “human-like attributes”. Please tell us […] how many theologians believe that their God – who is “certainly not human in any way” – is incapable of loving us and does not want us to worship him.

DAVID: Of course, they do, and I accept Adler's neutral position.

If Adler is neutral, then he can hardly inform us that his God is “certainly not human in any way”. Neutrality = God may or may not have human attributes. So do you now wish to jettison your bolded “certainly” comment above – and if you do, would you please stop objecting to my alternatives on the grounds that they entail human attributes.

God’s purpose

DAVID: [...] God's main purpose was to create us and our resources.

And:
DAVID: We are a most extraordinary result of a natural process; therefore, God designed us. No other explanation fits.

All life forms are complex enough for you to argue that they must have been designed, but we are not discussing the theory of design! We are discussing the illogical theory that your all-powerful, all-knowing God imperfectly and inefficiently designed and had to cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with the one and only purpose you allow him. Stop dodging.

99.9% versus 0.1%

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

DAVID: (referring to today’s species) [...] all direct descendants from the 99.9% extinct.

dhw: Now you turn yourself upside down and say all the survivors ARE direct descendants, and you ignore the dinosaur example we agreed on in the first place as an illustration of the percentage of species that were NOT our ancestors.

DAVID: If birds descended from Dinosaurs and we descended from tiny mammals of that same period, what is your problem? Each 0.1% line now here had extinctions to get here, all adding up to Raup's 99.9% lumped extinction rate.

dhw: Of course most of our 0.1% ancestors are also extinct – e.g. the 4 species of dinosaurs from which birds are descended – but they are a tiny proportion of the species that did not lead to us plus food, e.g. the 696 species of dinosaurs that had no descendants. Please tell us why your God designed and had to cull 696 species of dinosaur that had no connection with us, if we and our food were his one and only purpose. Your answer so far: God is an imperfect messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer. And I should read Adler […]

DAVID: Adler would educate you.

According to you, Adler does not cover your absurd theory.

DAVID: As for the required extinctions, they are the natural result of evolution.

Normally, when you use the word “natural”, you contrast it with deliberate design by your God. Please clarify: 1) did your God specially design and then have to cull the 696 dinosaur species that left no descendants? 2) Do you think your God deliberately sent the asteroid that killed them, or was the collision a natural event that he was unable to control?