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

by dhw, Sunday, June 30, 2024, 12:07 (144 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My personal theology is mine. I follow Adler and Aquinas only.

dhw: How can you then complain that my alternative and highly efficient versions of your God’s handling of evolution are wrong because I don’t know how to think about God “in true theological ways”, whereas you proudly offer us an inefficient God and ridicule any theologian who thinks God loves us and wants us to worship him, because your personal theology is that your God certainly is not human in any way.

DAVID: It is Adler's theology I have adopted and used.

And distorted – since he does not ridicule your God’s mode of evolution, and he does not support your certainty that your God is not human in any way.

DAVID: You don't recognize your travesty of your humanized God.

I do not regard a God who efficiently creates what he wants to create as a “humanized travesty”, but I do regard as a travesty any version of a perfect, omniscient, omnipotent God which ridicules him as an imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer.

dhw: […] to make matters worse, according to you he also knew that he was perfectly capable of creating species “de novo”, without having to design and cull 99.9 out of 100 species. Daft!

DAVID: Yes, you are daft. Only you can outthink God! An omniscient God picked the best system to create humans. Your brain is better than God's? No way.

It is you who are trying to outthink God and believe your brain is better than his! You impose your own idea of his purpose on him (from the start, he only wanted to design us plus food), and then impose your own idea of an imperfect, messy, cumbersome inefficient method on him. I propose theistic alternatives which logically explain the history of evolution’s comings and goings and show your God to have used evolution as the perfect, highly efficient way of achieving his purpose. And your one and only objection is that they involve thought patterns and emotions which even now you agree he may or may not have (see below).

"Allegory" and human attributes

dhw: My problem is that in your first comment and your “No!!!” response, God might not speak English, whereas you finish by agreeing that the question is whether he does or does not want us to worship him. And you keep popping in the word “allegorically” (see below), though you haven’t a clue what your Adler meant by it.

DAVID: I fully know how Adler used the word 'allegorically'.

When I asked you to explain it, you were "sure Adler knew the meaning of allegorical when he said to use it". Good for Adler. Now please define the word, tell us the difference between worship and allegorical worship, and please confirm your agreement that “it is not the meaning of the words that is in question, but their applicability to God.”

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!

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

dhw: A bad choice of words. A “personage” is a very important human being. God cannot possibly be any kind of human being, but that does not mean he can’t have attributes in common with human beings, as Adler clearly agrees, since he remains neutral on the subject. Meanwhile, if your God is “certainly not human in any way”, he cannot possibly have any human attributes, so you disagree with Adler and continue to tie yourself in knots.

DAVID: Adler used the word as quoted. Any human attributes must be applied allegorically to God.

When (two weeks ago) I quoted your certainty that God enjoyed creating, would be bored by Eden, might want to be recognized and worshipped, probably/possibly has thought patterns and emotion like ours, you replied that these were guesses, and “He may or may not have those feelings”. A week ago, you wrote: “I have no personal knowledge as you know. Of course, He may have human-like attributes.” This fits in with Adler’s neutrality and is the direct opposite of your “theology”, that your God is “certainly not human in any way”. The word “allegorically” does not remove your absurd self-contradictions:
1)Your perfect God is an imperfect designer.
2)Of course your God may have human-like attributes, but he is certainly not human in any way.
3)Your selfless God might want us to worship him.
4)Dhw doesn’t know how to think about God “in true theological ways”, but you dismiss all theologies that differ from yours, because “my personal theology is mine. I follow Adler and Aquinas only” (= double standards).
5)Your all-good God deliberately creates evil (as a “challenge”).
6)We and our food are not directly descended from 99.9% of creatures that ever lived, but we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of creatures that ever lived.