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

by dhw, Sunday, July 21, 2024, 08:08 (49 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: That each of us has a preferred form of God does not create progress to an agreement.

dhw Of course not. I have simply pointed out that your ridicule of your perfect, omniscient, omnipotent God’s combined evolutionary purpose and method as imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient might possibly be wrong. Previously, you have rejected all my theistic alternatives (nothing “preferred”) out of hand as “humanizing”, but now you say it’s a matter of which “possible attributes” we prefer.

DAVID: Which means I can ridicule your namby-pamby humanized God any way I wish. Or we can be nice to each other. However, we can never agree, based on our individual starting points.
And:
DAVID: Free-for-alls which entertain and experimentation produce a so-called God weak in purpose.

The whole point of these discussions is to exchange ideas and to test their feasibility. Your theory that a perfect, omnipotent, omniscient God would choose a purpose and method which, in combination, you regard as imperfect and inefficient seems to me to be illogical and self-contradictory. Of course you can ridicule my alternatives as “namby-pamby”, but if for example we consider the free-for-all hypothesis, you have said that your God gave humans free will because “he would not have enjoyed watching our development if he knew it all in advance”. That is precisely the argument I use in proposing that just as your God gave humans the mechanisms with which to make their own decisions, he could have done the same for cells to do their own designing. He would not have enjoyed watching evolution develop "if he knew it all advance.” I have no idea why you would ridicule this as “namby-pamby” and “weak in purpose”, or why you dismiss the human attribute of enjoyment in relation to evolutionary development, but embrace it in relation to human development. These objections are as self-contradictory as your theistic theory of evolution.

Schizophrenia

DAVID: The God I think about is not schizophrenic, while MY views are schizo. I don't see God as Jekyll or Hyde even if my views are.

dhw: If your view is that your God is benevolent but not benevolent, may want recognition and worship but does not want recognition and worship, then your view is that he is schizophrenic. That does not mean that he IS schizophrenic. It is simply your belief that he is.

DAVID: What all of this means is we cannot know if any of the attributes we attach to God's personality can apply.

We agree. Then there is no schizophrenia in you or in God. What a pity you made all those other statements, in which you called God benevolent and agreed that he probably has other human attributes but at the same time told us that he certainly “is not human in any sense[/b],” which would mean that he could not be benevolent or have any other human attributes.

DAVID: That God I've met is Adler's, in His philosophy of God.

dhw: I’m surprised that Adler ridicules God as a messy, inefficient designer, and that he views God schizophrenically as benevolent but not benevolent, wanting but not wanting recognition etc. as above, although apparently Adler himself says such attributes are 50/50. Since you follow him, are you saying that his views are schizophrenic?

DAVID: Adler solves the yes or no problem by bringing us the concept of allegorical attributes, much like Schrodinger's dead and alive cat. All you ascribe above to Adler are my thoughts, not Adler's.

So please stop making these constant claims that you follow Adler, and are “perfectly with Adler”, when your theory of evolution and your schizophrenic views of God – the subjects of all these disagreements – are yours and not his. As I said earlier, he’d probably be turning in his grave if he thought you were using him as back-up!