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

by dhw, Saturday, July 06, 2024, 08:59 (64 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You still don't understand. Human words may not have the same meaning when applied to God. God probably thinks in His own language. Undoubtedly, He understands our language.

dhw: You still don’t understand, or are pretending that you don’t understand. When we ask whether God wants us to worship him or not, WE know what the word means to US, because we invented it. The question has nothing whatsoever to do with your God’s command of English. Either he does or he doesn’t want us to do what WE mean by the word we invented! You described your God as benevolent. Did you then ask yourself: “Ah, but does God understand what I mean by benevolent?” Of course you didn’t. Stop dodging.

DAVID: Of course I do! What we mean by benevolent may not have the same meaning at the God level. We do not know how our words relate to God. An omniscient God must know our meaning, but He may not view it as we do. That is the conundrum.

This is getting silly. We want to know if he is benevolent, i.e. has goodwill towards us, wants to be kind and helpful. How many more adjectives do you need? We don’t want to know if he has a different concept of benevolence; we simply want to know if he has OUR concept of benevolence. Supposing, for example, he thinks that being benevolent means designing bugs to cause us endless pain and suffering so that he can enjoy watching us scream in agony, then as far as WE are concerned, he is not benevolent. You thought he might want us to worship him (= love, respect, praise, thank him) – not if he thought the word “worship” might mean to deny his existence, blame him for his evil nature, or call him an imperfectly, messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer.

DAVID: I can call Him benevolent from my religious feelings, but an analytical philosophic view says I don't know He is benevolent. A bit schizophrenic on my part, as I believe at two levels. Religiously and analytically.

dhw: You’re the doctor. I find this confession quite moving, as it’s the first time you’ve acknowledged the massive split which is so evident from your long list of contradictions […] You diagnosed the problem some time ago, when you confessed: “I first choose a form of God I wish to believe in. The rest follows […] . Your reason undermines your preconceptions, but you will only accept what you wished for in the first place. […] Thank you for your honest self-analysis, which I hope will provide a reference point for future discussions.

DAVID: Yes, in this level of discussion I am Jekyll and Hyde.

dhw: I’m relieved and indeed pleased that you have accepted my diagnosis without any reservations. It explains your mass of contradictions, but now the question is whether you will open your mind to the possibility that these contradictions might mean that some of your wishful thinking might be wrong, since your inner Jekyll and Hyde keep lumbering you with totally opposite theories, all of which you say you believe in.

DAVID: […] I see His use of evolution as a cumbersome choice. But we arrived, so why complain?

dhw: You have totally ignored all of the above, which responds to your admission that you are a Jekyll and Hyde, which explains all the absurd contradictions that make nonsense of your theories. The very fact that you see your perfect, omnipotent, omniscient God as the designer of an imperfect, inefficient system (your adjectives, not mine) illustrates the confusion caused by your two conflicting identities. This was an honest acknowledgement of your own confusion and of the contradictions I listed earlier. Please don’t start trying to cover it all up again.

DAVID: we don't need to.

Who are “we”? Your blatant self-contradictions are caused by your inability to match what you wish your God to be with what your analytical reasoning tells you he might be. Hence your God probably has human-like attributes but cannot possibly have human-like attributes etc. etc. Do you want me to repeat the list?