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

by dhw, Wednesday, July 10, 2024, 11:20 (134 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I see God from very distinct intellectual directions as a believer accepting God and as a critical philosopher of religion. I wear two hats while you wear none.

dhw: More obfuscation. Accepting God as what? Both your Jekyll and your Hyde believe in God and accept his existence. But your Jekyll says God is benevolent, and your Hyde says he can’t possibly be benevolent. This is not criticism of religion. It is you contradicting yourself. The honest answer would be that you believe God is benevolent but you recognize that we can never know if he is or not, and so the chances are 50/50, as your Adler tried to teach you. In your more enlightened moments, you even agree, but then Jekyll and Hyde take over, and back you go to your 100 for/100 against.

DAVID: I'm perfectly with Adler. He did not teach me to think about God religiously exclusively but also philosophically.

According to you, Adler gives odds of 50/50 that God does or doesn’t care for us (= benevolence). Your religious self preaches 100% benevolence (re nasty microbiomes: “A benevolent God did this, fully understanding the consequences”), and your philosophical self preaches 100% non-benevolence (God is certainly “not human in any way”). Your “theology” is riddled with such contradictions – do you want me to repeat the list? – and I suspect that Adler would be turning in his grave if he knew you were blaming him for you schizophrenic confusion.

DAVID: Adler teaches we can only approach God using allegorical terms for Him while we use them at our level.

dhw: You have given us your definition of “allegory”, so please tell us what “moral or hidden meaning” there could be in the word “benevolent”.

DAVID: That is the exact point. What does our word 'benevolent' mean to God? We don't know.

Yet again: the question is not whether God has a different dictionary. The question is whether he is or isn’t benevolent in our sense of the word, i.e. does he care for us or doesn’t he? Stop dodging.

DAVID: My compartmentalization is the perfect solution for me.

dhw: Your perfect solution is to believe in a God who is perfect and imperfect, benevolent and incapable of benevolence. You attack my theistic alternatives solely on the grounds that they entail human-like attributes. But since your Jekyll believes that your God probably/possibly has human-like attributes, you have demolished your case against my alternatives. The fact that your critical philosopher Hyde rejects all human-like attributes does not alter your Jekyll’s support for my different proposals: a God who feels human-like benevolence must also be capable of feeling the human-like enjoyment, interest, desire for recognition and worship which you yourself proposed not long ago. […] In our discussions, you have failed to realize that you are not disagreeing with me: you are disagreeing with yourself. (dhw’s new bold, since you keep forgetting this.)

DAVID: My internal disagreements do not affect my approach to your humanized form of God. A purposeful God knows exactly His goals and proceeds accordingly. Yours doesn't.

Of course he does. The purpose of a free-for-all and of one form of experimentation would be the fascination and enjoyment of all the different life forms, making endless new discoveries, learning new things. (YOU were certain that he enjoyed creating, so don’t blame me if your other self said you were wrong.) Why would your God want to create life in the first place? Maybe to put an end to the sheer boredom of eternal existence with nothing to focus on except his own sourceless, never-ending self. YOU mentioned the spectre of boredom (he would have found Eden and puppets boring), but then your other self disagreed. The second form of experimentation would be the idea of creating a being in his own image (perhaps to recognize and worship him, as YOU have suggested), and trying to find the best formula. Each of these has a purpose, and your God “proceeds accordingly”. All have been successful. Only your theory – the deliberate creation of and need to cull 99.9 out of 100 irrelevant species - leads to one of you ridiculing him as being imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient, while the other self thinks the imperfection and inefficiency are perfect and beautiful. Total confusion.