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

by David Turell , Friday, June 28, 2024, 19:38 (71 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You ignore what I write. I have my personal theology built on instructions from a philosopher of religion.

dhw: So Adler instructed you to tell us that your God is an imperfect, messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer, did he? Well even if he did, that doesn’t make it true, and it doesn’t make it conform to the views of all theologians.

Why must it conform? I am not 'monkey-see, monkey-do'.

"Allegory" and Human attributes

DAVID: Simple: Worship at our level may not have the same meaning as applied to God's wishes about worship.

dhw: “Worship” means to show respect, love, appreciation, gratitude etc at any level.

No!!! We do not know how God interprets/treats our word 'worship'.

dhw: The question is whether God does or doesn’t want us to do this. And you “accepted that it is not the meaning of the words that is in question, but their applicability to God.” Stop dodging.

Yes, we agree. What is your problem?

DAVID: Now twisting the meaning of neutral as I applied it to Adler. Adler is agnostic about God's personality. Neutral=taking neither side.

dhw: Precisely, but you have stated that your God is “certainly not human in any way” – which means God has no human attributes, the very opposite of “neutral”! Stop twisting yourself in knots!

Your mental knots! God may have allegorically determined human attributes, OR He may not. Adler: God is a personage like no other person.

God’s purpose

dhw: 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.

DAVID: The dodge is yours to keep dredging up your illogical complaint. Repeat: an omniscient God chose the best system to create humans and it worked. To our human brains it looks cumbersome, but apparently not to God.

dhw: You keep insisting that you know your unknowable God started out with the sole intention of creating humans and he decided to choose a messy, inefficient way to do it. Here are two alternatives which are not imperfect, messy, cumbersome or inefficient: God chose the best system to create a free-for-all, and it worked. God chose to experiment with his new invention and see what different forms of life he could create, and it worked. Why do you insist that only your theory of imperfection and inefficiency is the only possible theistic explanation of evolution?

Yours is not theistic, just humanizing God who doesn't control all processes.

99.9% versus 0.1%

DAVID: Schroeder, an orthodox Jewish theoretical physicist, guessed God used the asteroid. I'll stick with that. God culled the dinosaurs.

dhw: A good illustration, then, of your God’s decision to design and then cull 99.9% of species that had no connection with the one and only purpose you impose on him – a choice which YOU consider to be imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient.

I consider an omniscient God chose the system, as above.