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

by David Turell , Friday, August 16, 2024, 16:39 (31 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: My previous schizophrenic discussion in no way took away God's perfection. They are my opinion, as you point out.
And:
DAVID: criticisms of God's methods are a human view, are nowhere equivalent to God's all-knowing decision making.

dhw: Your human opinion of your perfect God is that he is imperfect. But you still won’t admit that your criticisms might be wrong, and so you quite rightly ridicule as “schizophrenic” your opinion that your perfect God is imperfect.

You conflate my critique of His method of evolution as disparaging His personality. He is perfect, using system He feels in perfect.

DAVID: Again, view your misunderstanding in viewing God's 'selflessness'. God does not act to please Himself. He has no need to. In His view Creation is simply purpose.

dhw: “In His view…” How the heck do you know his view? It is YOUR view that he is selfless, but this conflicts with your view that he enjoys creating, is interested in his creations, and might want us to recognize and worship him. And so once more you have to admit that your views are schizophrenic. “Creation is simply purpose” is meaningless. It is only logical to assume that if he exists, he had a purpose for creating life.

He is MY God, so I will imagine Him as I wish. My expressed opinion that "he enjoys creating, is interested in his creations, and might want us to recognize and worship him", are my wishes for attributes He might have. Remember Adler said God's interest in us is a 50/50 proposition. Selflessness applies. And His purpose was to produce us.

dhw: 4)You believe your God is responsible for various forms of evil. […] as all this conflicts with your wish for a “perfect” God (= a God who in your eyes has no faults), we should ignore the evil and only focus on the good. More schizophrenic, self-contradictory theories.

DAVID: Without all the enormous various 'good' God created for us there would be no "bad". Would you prefer never existing?

dhw: The question is not what I want, but what is the nature of God, if he exists. How can he knowingly create evil if he himself is all-good? From “More Miscellany, Part Two”:
DAVID: Tumors are mistakes in God's systems.

dhw: Yet another example of your perfect God’s imperfections.

DAVID: Don't you remember, God's systems are based on free-floating molecules? It makes life exist! It is the molecules free-to-make-mistakes that creates the bad. God DIDN'T do it. Nor is there any way He could completely stop them. He did put in editing systems, but they never could be perfect because of the freedom problem of molecules in those systems.

dhw: How can an all-powerful, all-knowing God who creates systems which he knows will result in evil be viewed as “perfect” and all-good? THAT is the question posed by theodicy. You do not answer it by saying there is more good than evil, or by asking me whether I would prefer not to exist! Furthermore, you now believe in an all-powerful, perfect God who is powerless to avoid imperfections in his own works.

Life can only exist with freely acting molecules! Free to fail. Try and grasp that point. There is no other way God could do it.

dhw: […] my alternatives may or may not be true. But none of them start out from any subjective "wishes" that shape what follows, and none of them are schizophrenically self-contradictory.

DAVID: To arrive at my position, I first assumed there was a first cause. Then I studied the complexity of living biochemistry and concluded it was designed. That designer had to be so powerful He created the universe, the Earth, and then created life, and evolved it into humans and their supporting ecosystems. Next step was then to review how religions viewed God. As Karen Armstrong showed in her book, The History of God, the most mature way of viewing God was to study His works. That is what I had done and continue to do. A logical series of thoughts. I took steps dhw is incapable of doing.

dhw: We both accept that there must have been a first cause. As I learnt more and more about life’s complexities and mysteries, my own steps were from believer to atheist to agnostic. I launched this website initially out of dismay at the feeble responses of religious thinkers to Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and I am often appalled by the arrogance of both theists and atheists in their lop-sided assumptions. On a personal level, I have the greatest respect for the scientific case you make in favour of design, as argued in your brilliant book The Atheist Delusion. It is your highly subjective, self-contradictory, schizophrenic views on your God’s nature and purpose that I find absurdly illogical, and I do not accept your view that my criticisms of these and my own alternative proposals are somehow due to my own inability to take logical steps.

Yes, the power of the appearance of design returned you from atheism to agnosticism. Happened to me also but I made the other logical step to see design needs a designer. I found one.