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

by David Turell , Sunday, July 21, 2024, 19:40 (48 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Free-for-alls which entertain and experimentation produce a so-called God weak in purpose.

dhw: 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.

You still do not see the view of believers. Whatever God chooses is correct.

dhw: 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”.

How much 'enjoyment' does a God require? An unknown quatity, unanswerable question.

dhw:.... 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.

All allegorical guesses about God, whose personage is not like ours. He may not wish to care about us at all, with Adler at 50/50, neutral.

Schizophrenia

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.

dhw: 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!

I follow his principles of how to think about God. You assume I'm quoting Adler. My conclusions are my own.