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

by David Turell , Thursday, July 11, 2024, 20:03 (58 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: […] I suspect that Adler would be turning in his grave if he knew you were blaming him for you schizophrenic confusion.

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

dhw: Thank you for once again admitting that your theology is riddled with illogicalities and contradictions. Do you not realize that this can only mean something is wrong with your theories? My neutralism does not reduce the absurdity of your evolutionary theory of your God’s inefficiency, or your theory of his nature, which for instance is benevolent, but can’t be benevolent. My neutralism allows me to propose theistic explanations without any contradictions, and your only objection is that they entail human-like attributes which you agree he might have but which you firmly state he can’t have.

Since you have no set beliefs you can invent any sort of God you wish. What pops out is a mirror image of your imagination, filled with humanized approaches. That He wants a free-for-all type of evolution for entertainment, ignoring its loss of control, is like no other theology in existence. That He must experiment show us a God who is middling along and is not all-knowing.

DAVID: 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.

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

dhw: The word “benevolent” is our invention, and we don’t know if he is or isn’t. This does not depend on whether God’s dictionary gives a different meaning to the word. It means: does God care for us or doesn’t he? Your answer: yes he does, no he can’t, but Adler says 50/50, and you admit that it is your schizophrenia which makes you so confused.

You have properly described the discussion at our level. You neatly sluffed of the issue of what God thinks of it. We can wish for a Godly action, it may happen, but we will never know God's thoughts about it, His reasoning in His response.

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: I shan’t repeat my alternative theories concerning possible goals and methods, since your response implicitly recognizes their logic, and simply attempts to change the subject:

dhw: 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 your other self thinks the imperfection and inefficiency are perfect and beautiful. Total confusion.

DAVID: 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. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: All of my summary concerns your God’s possible purposes, methods and nature. (There is of course no point in presenting the atheist’s view here, which is simply that God doesn’t exist.) Your desperation to divert us to the argument for God’s existence won’t help you. There is no reason why life itself should be an “expected result” (bolded above), and there is no reason why the dog and its nose, the camel and its hump, the whale, the eagle, the ant, the shark, the weaverbird etc. should be an “expected result”. I have never denied the uniqueness of our degree of intelligence and consciousness, but we are just one piece of evidence for design out of millions, right down to the astonishing complexity of a single cell. THAT IS NOT THE ISSUE HERE, so stop dodging.

You dodged again. You champion Darwin's 'survivability' as a driver of evolution. Explain how the sapiens brain improved that ability, especially since our close cousins, the apes do just fine without it. Then add all the skeletal issues that allow us to do what apes cannot. WE don't compare to the complexity of single cells. We have trillions of them in our bodies.