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

by David Turell , Wednesday, July 10, 2024, 19:35 (134 days ago) @ dhw

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

dhw: 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.

I've admitted to the schizophrenic theology I have, while your neutralism is a soft cushion of what?

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.

dhw: 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.

Exactly! We don't know if He is benevolent as we mean it.

DAVID: My compartmentalization is the perfect solution for me.

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.

dhw: 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.

A great summary. But it carefully ignores my presentation of Adler's proof of God in the creation of humans by Darwin's materialistic theory. There is no reason we should be an expected result. Compared to living apes, our mobile ability and brain power were not necessary to appear. This philosophic nuance escapes your thinking.